Micro Nuclear Reactor Approvals

Last Energy received U.S. Department of Energy approval of the Documented Safety Analysis for its pilot reactor at Texas A&M–RELLIS, the final and most comprehensive safety review in DOE's authorization process. The project now moves into DOE's readiness review, the final step before startup authorization for criticality and reactor operations.

The pilot uses the same full-scale core as Last Energy's commercial design and runs on low-enriched uranium fuel from an established commercial supply chain. It serves as a bridge to the PWR-20, a 20 MWe micro modular plant designed for factory fabrication, standard road transport, and rapid on-site assembly, delivering baseload power to industrial customers and other high-energy users.

As developers seek faster paths to deployment, this approval signals that pilot demonstrations of full-scale cores could help standardized, factory-built nuclear plants move toward commercial power generation.