Seems like a good place for them.
Kansas, that is.
No one has tried operating a commercial nuclear reactor deep underground—until now. The so-called Gravity Reactor is the creation of Liz Muller and her father, Richard Muller, emeritus professor of physics at University of California, Berkeley and an inventor. They founded Deep Fission, a three-year-old California startup that has raised around $150 million in the past year, including $40 million last month through an initial public offering, largely to fund the work in Parsons.
Parsons, with a population of 9,600, sits about midway between Kansas City and Tulsa, Okla. Deep Fission drilled a first test hole this spring on 100 acres at a mostly overgrown industrial park dotted with old munitions bunkers just outside town.
Deep Fission’s is using a common, scaled-down, reactor design; its innovation is putting it underground.
The key to the plan is avoiding the need for hulking containment buildings. Instead, the mile-deep hole will provide the necessary pressure, cooling and containment. A single reactor will generate just 15 megawatts, enough to power about 12,000 homes, but Muller envisions an array of 100 or more, providing more than a gigawatt, enough for a data center. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission would oversee approval of commercial licensing, needed to sell electricity.
Not everyone is thrilled.
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Elected officials and some others see a chance to create jobs and lure data centers and manufacturers to a rural patch whose economy has been flatter than the surrounding cornfields. Another group is effectively saying “not under my backyard.”
“I put $125,000 into my house, and now a nuclear reactor is coming to town,” said Jerel Johnson, an IT professional who planned to retire in Parsons. “I can’t think of a worse idea.”