INL building up 2,000-acre Nuclear Energy Launch Pad in Idaho desert

IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (KIFI) – Idaho National Laboratory is creating a physical launch pad across 2,000 acres in the Idaho desert for the future of nuclear power.

Twelve companies and 13 projects have been selected to participate in the Nuclear Energy Launch Pad program, which is hosted by the National Reactor Innovation Center (NRIC) and will be located at the Central Facilities Area.

“The NRIC Nuclear Energy Launch Pad allows private industry to come in and build their own facilities on Idaho National Laboratory property,” said NRIC Chief Operating Officer Josh Gillespie. "We have set aside about 2,000 acres out in the desert site that we're setting up – similar to a subdivision – where we're going to put in roads, utilities, survey the land and allow developers to apply to obtain a lease and build their own facilities at their own cost, but we will bring to bear the resources of the national laboratory system to help them with their objectives of testing out their technology with the purpose of obtaining a commercial license."

Companies participating in Launch Pad INL and Launch Pad USA include:

• Antares Nuclear
• Atlas Atomics
• Deployable Energy (2 projects)
• Forge Atomics
• Hexium Inc.
• Lightbridge Corporation
• Nusano, Inc.
• Oklo
• Raven-Flint Nuclear
• Scaled Atomics
• Sublime Nuclear
• Valar Atomics

Six of the projects will be located here in Idaho.

"We have three reactor demonstrations," Gillespie explained. "We have a fuel enrichment. We have a fuel fabricator, and we have a fuel converter." 

These later projects will help work toward American fuel independence.

“The fuel fabrication space, the fuel enrichment space is one area that as a nation we've lagged behind over the past few decades," Gillespie said. "There is a definite national need to go off and grow our ability to domestically manufacture fuel in this country. For decades, we've obtained the fuel from other nations. We need to go off and develop that capability here to do that domestically.”

With more AI data centers, factories and electric vehicles coming online, INL is also aiming to fill the world’s voracious appetite for energy with nuclear power.

"We need more and more electricity. Our goal is a nation by 2050 is to have 400 GW of electricity powered by nuclear on our grid," Gillespie said. "Today, we only have 100 GW of nuclear."

400 GW of power can power 300 million homes.

Quadrupling America’s nuclear energy output in 24 years requires the best minds in industry to converge with Idaho National Laboratory’s infrastructure and decades of experience in cutting-edge nuclear research and leadership.

"That's a tremendous challenge, and it's only a challenge we're going to achieve by partnering with industry, by working to advance and deploy very quickly and very safely to make sure that we can satisfy the needs of Americans and industry, and keep us as positioned as the premier power providers in the world," Gillespie said.

The Nuclear Energy Launch Pad adds to the Department of Energy’s successful Reactor Pilot Program and Fuel Line Pilot Programs launched last year, safely accelerating the advanced nuclear technology pipeline from test prototypes to full deployment.

The Launch Pad will help the nuclear industry test new advanced technologies and prepare to scale them commercially across the globe.