When I was a kid, the world had conflated nuclear reactors with nuclear bombs. We outlawed the wrong one. If we had built nuclear reactors the way we built warheads, you never would have heard of global warming. We got scared of a technology we didn’t understand and outlawed nuclear reactors, nearly to oblivion.
We’re still not being honest about this and in the U.S. the regulatory quagmire is like trying to run the American Ninja Warrior obstacle course in a pair of stilettos. Years ago, folks at my lab invented the TerraPower reactor, to be powered by nuclear waste. Bill Gates is chairman of the company and 17 years later, we’re still not allowed to build it. There’s just no way to get advanced reactor technology approved in the U.S.
Last year, Stephen Wolfram told me that a friend of his had invented a nuclear reactor that could get approved quickly. I have a lot of scar tissue from the TerraPower experience, but figured I’d take a look. It turns out the inventor is Rich Muller, a physicist who has had two Nobel prizes come out of his previous projects.
There is something that can get approved, reactors based on old technology. So Rich figured out how to design one using the same technology already deployed in 92 pressurized water reactors around America. His solution is ingenious, and I am so excited to tell you how it works.
The Deep Fission reactor gets buried a mile deep in a borehole, under ten billion tons of rock. The borehole gets filled with water that cycles through the reactor where it instantly becomes steam that goes up a pipe, into a turbine and turns a generator. 15 megawatts of electricity is produced, enough to power about 5000 homes, even if a bunch of them are charging Teslas at night.
Want more power? No problem, drill another hole.
What if it melts down? It can’t, but if it did, nothing would happen on the surface.
What about nuclear waste? At the end of the reactors lifetime of about 40 years, we seal up the hole and leave it down there forever.
Today’s reactors are each like original art projects. None of them have any interchangeable parts, almost as if the industrial revolution never happened. Nothing is cost effective if you’re only building one. Deep Fission can fulfill my personal dream of building reactors in a factory, like Toyotas, with obviously radical cost savings.
The public has been learning about nuclear energy (watch Nuclear Now). The tech industry just realized it needs a metric shitton more clean energy to power all the chips it bought for AI. Last year, Congress passed the bipartisan Atomic Energy Advancement Act to overhaul the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This year, the president has signed multiple executive orders to accelerate deployment of nuclear energy.
When can you get one? Deep Fission had been working on an aggressive timeline, to deploy their first reactor in 2029. Last week, the Department of Energy approved them to get it done by July.
Now is the time when we course correct on human history. We are all made of energy and being able to provide enough for everyone is the most important turning point for humanity.