Even if you don’t follow the nuclear industry, it’s likely you’ve heard the stories of how tech billionaires, like Bill Gates of Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) fame, Eric Schmidt of Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG), Sam Altman of ChatGPT, and Jeff Bezos of Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), are all investing significant sums to bring nuclear energy back to the energy generation model.
While it’s not technically a renewable energy source, it does have near-zero carbon footprint once its operational, and new types of fission reactors are more standardized and modular.
That allows them to be built for small towns and cities with less cost and less risk of accidents. That also means less distribution infrastructure needs to be built to get power to the market.
Just this week, the White House has announced its interest in speeding next-gen nuke deployment.
One of the few publicly traded direct investments in this sector is NuScale (NYSE:SMR).
Another new technology that China is pioneering is based off research done in the US during the Cold War. Instead of using plutonium or uranium, they use thorium, which is more stable and much easier (and cheaper) to manufacture.
Combined with a new concept called molten salt reactors (MSRs), it significantly reduces the potential for catastrophic meltdowns if things get out of hand. It also means there’s less of a strategic weakness if bad actors want to disrupt power supplies.
Another new technology to watch is what are known as pebble bed reactors.
They put the nuclear fuel in “pebbles”. The upside is that this strategy also helps contain any runaway overheating events since the pebbles can be dumped before the entire reactor is threatened.
These pebble reactors are also very good for smaller uses – the US military already has prototypes that can fit on a truck and can be set up on bases in the battle theater for consistent power supplies.
Two companies to watch in this space are X-energy, which makes the pebbles, and BWX Technologies (NYSE:BWXT), which is a major supplier of fissile nuclear material to the US military and nuclear sites, as well as a pebble maker.
