A new report from Canaccord Genuity captures the main threads from the firm’s first Nuclear Nexus conference, where fission and fusion developers, academics, and investors gathered to confront the practical barriers to scaling nuclear power.
The event highlighted a shared recognition that surging electricity demand from AI data centers “finds itselfbottle-neckedby the physical reality ofthe grid”, forcing a hard look atfuel supply chains, regulatory timelines, and technology choicesthat can actually deliver power this decade.
The forum set out to connect the established track record of fission with the still-developing promise of fusion. Participants framed the two paths as complementary: one centered on controlled separation to release energy at scale, the other on forcing materials together under extreme conditions to achieve the same goal.
Canaccord’s summary presents this tension as more than rhetoric, noting that Western nuclear deployment has lagged for decades, while Asia and Russia have moved ahead,driving up costs and exposing fuel vulnerabilities.
Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitte outlined the company’sAurora Powerhouse, a liquid sodium-cooled fast reactor drawing on proven EBR-II technology and a build-own-operate model. He stressed the importance of securing adomestic HALEU supply chain through Idaho National Laboratory andCentrus, with longer-term options that include spent fuel reprocessing and access to government plutonium reserves suited to fast reactor designs.
The discussion tied directly into broader concerns about Western dependence onforeign enriched uranium sources.
MIT professor Jacopo Buongiorno highlighted how the lack of recentconstruction experiencein the West has roughly doubled nuclear build costs compared with earlier decades. He noted that small modular reactors are more likely to provide financing flexibility than dramatically lower electricity costs, and that HALEU supply remains a critical chokepoint.
The contrast with rapid expansion in Asia and continued Russian export dominance was presented as astructural challenge rather than a temporary setback.
On the fusion side, UK Atomic Energy Authority’s Mike Gorley described the technology as fundamentally alarge-scale thermal engineering problem rather than pure physics. A key constraint he flagged is the global shortage ofLithium-6, essential for tritium breeding and reactor performance.
Several companies presented deployment timelines. Terra Innovatum’s SOLO microreactor is designed to run on either LEU or HALEU and incorporates inherent safety features that eliminate meltdown and explosion risks. The company is targeting afirst-of-a-kind demonstration in 2027and commercial units in 2028 under the NRC’s proposedPart 57 microreactor framework.
Source: ZeroHedge News
