Apogee Atomics Inc. Dover, Delaware

Nuclear power that ships in a container.

We build compact energy modules around a single new material: a thorium–graphene fuel matrix printed as a repeating three-dimensional lattice. The lattice carries the fuel, conducts the heat and breeds its own tritium, which lets a reactor be small, passive and factory-built instead of large, pumped and poured in concrete.

25 MWe

Reference module output

40 ft

Standard ISO footprint

Subcritical

Stops when the beam stops

Investor overview See the systems

01Systems

Two reactors, one material

Both of our systems are built from the same lattice. One drives it with a proton beam, the other with a laser. Neither uses a large magnet, a pressure vessel or a primary pump.

SYS / MRMACDesign · patents filed

Modular accelerator-driven thorium module

Beam on, power on

A compact plasma accelerator fires protons at a spallation target sitting inside the fuel lattice. Each proton releases a shower of neutrons, and those neutrons turn thorium into usable fuel and split it. The core holds far too little fissile material to sustain itself, so the reaction only continues while the beam is running.

Everything travels in one shielded box: accelerator, core, shielding, control and heat exchange. It is craned off a truck, levelled and connected.

DriverPlasma wakefield, >300 MeV

FuelTh-232 in graphene lattice

CoolingPassive, no primary pump

Second modeWaste transmutation

SYS / JANUSDesign · patents filed

Fusion–fission hybrid with fast ignition

Laser in, heat and fuel out

The pores of the lattice become millions of tiny combustion chambers. A frozen deuterium–tritium grain is dropped into a pore, squeezed by one laser pulse, then ignited a few nanoseconds later by a second, much shorter pulse. The fusion neutrons that escape are not wasted: they split thorium in the pore wall and breed new tritium in a lithium coating.

The result is a fusion machine that produces several times more heat than the fusion reaction itself, and refuels itself with the tritium it makes.

IgnitionTwo-stage laser, >10¹⁹ W/cm²

Energy gainM > 5, target > 10

Tritium balanceTBR > 1.15

MagnetsNone

02Principle

Read it twice

The left column is the physics. The right column is what it changes commercially. Both are the same sentence.

Fuel matrix · scan Deterministic lattice, hierarchical porosity Sampling

The physics

A lattice instead of a fuel rod

The fuel is not a stack of ceramic pellets. It is a continuous three-dimensional lattice of covalently bonded graphene walls, a few atoms thick, with thorium oxide deposited on them one atomic layer at a time. Seventy to ninety per cent of the volume is empty.

What it changes

Heat leaves on its own

Graphene conducts heat roughly two hundred times better than a fuel pellet. Heat walks out through the structure rather than being pushed out by pumps. That removes the pumps, the pressure vessel and most of the reason a reactor needs a large containment building.

The physics

Subcritical by construction

Heavy atoms are diluted through a carbon skeleton, and there is no hydrogen moderator outside the pores. Effective multiplication stays below 0.9, so the chain reaction cannot sustain itself without an external neutron source.

What it changes

The off switch is the power cord

Cut power to the accelerator or the laser and fission stops in under a microsecond. There is no runaway scenario to engineer against, which is where a large share of conventional plant cost and licensing time is spent.

The physics

The wall is also the blanket

Pore walls carry a lithium layer enriched in lithium-6. Neutrons passing through it produce tritium in place, giving a breeding ratio above 1.15. Structure, breeder, neutron multiplier and heat exchanger are the same piece of material.

What it changes

Four systems become one part

Conventional fusion designs buy those four functions as four separate assemblies. Collapsing them into one printed component removes interfaces, removes failure modes, and moves the cost curve from construction to manufacturing.

The physics

Thorium becomes fuel in place

Thorium-232 is fertile, not fissile. Neutrons from the driver convert it into uranium-233, which then fissions and multiplies the energy released by the driver by a factor of five or more.

What it changes

Cheap, abundant, hard to divert

Thorium is a by-product of rare-earth mining and is far more abundant than the uranium isotope used today. Fuel is not enriched, and the fissile material only exists inside a sealed module while it is running.

03Operation

Watch it run

Two working schematics. The first is the accelerator-driven module end to end, and the beam can be cut. The second is a single pore of the fusion machine, one shot at a time.

MRMAC · operating schematic Accelerator-driven subcritical module Beam on · power on

Beam current

4.20 mA

k effective

0.884

Core wall temp

742 °C

Net electric

25.0 MWe

Try it · fission follows the driver

JANUS · ignition sequence One macropore, one shot Phase 01 · injection

Fuel density

0 kg/m³

Hot spot

—

Energy gain M

—

Tritium bred TBR

—

Schematics are simplified and not to scale. Values shown are design targets from simulation, not measurements from operating hardware.

04Technology

The stack

Eleven building blocks. Each one exists because a conventional component would have made the module too big, too fragile or too slow to deploy.

MAT-01

Thorium–graphene lattice

A deterministic geodesic structure, not a random foam. Walls one to twenty atoms thick, with barrier layers keeping carbon and thorium from reacting.

ACC-02

Compact plasma accelerator

Plasma wakefield acceleration with inverted radial focusing. It reaches spallation energy over centimetres rather than tens of metres.

TGT-03

Nanofractal spallation target

A fractal impact surface paired with self-oscillating capillary heat pipes. Extreme heat flux is removed with no moving parts.

CTL-04

Neutron-metered AI control

In-core neutron sensors feed a predictive model that trims the beam before reactivity drifts, with a hardwired trip if model and measurement disagree.

CPL-05

Windowless beam coupling

The beam is guided magnetically through an unbroken wall. Deleting the beam window deletes the most failure-prone part of an accelerator-driven reactor.

SHL-06

Active monobloc shielding

Borated polymer, tungsten and carbon composite layers with optical and piezo sensors woven in, so the shield reports its own condition during transport.

TRM-07

Programmable transmutation

Tuning beam energy moves the neutron spectrum onto the absorption resonance of a chosen isotope, so the same machine can burn selected waste.

NET-08

Photonic interconnect

Radiation-hardened fibre carrying encoded photon states between modules. Interception changes the signal, so tampering is detected in the physics.

LOG-09

Self-deploying chassis

Integrated crane, tracked drive and self-levelling feet. The module installs itself on unprepared ground with no site crane and no poured foundation.

SPC-10

Radiative space variant

Graphene and nanotube radiator panels fold into a launcher fairing and deploy in orbit. The core is launched cold and only activates once the driver runs.

FUS-11

Fast-ignition fusion chamber

Compression and ignition are handled by two independent laser systems. Decoupling them removes the perfect-symmetry requirement of conventional inertial fusion.

PWR-12

Supercritical CO₂ conversion

A closed Brayton loop turns heat into electricity at 45–50 per cent, in a turbomachine small enough to sit inside the same container.

05Applications

Where a shippable reactor pays

The module is deliberately generic. The value differs by market: some buyers want the price, some want the silence, some want the fact that it works where nothing else does.

Grid and industrial heat

Firm output for islands, mines and industrial parks that today burn diesel or wait years for a transmission line.

25 MWe reference

Data centres

Power sited next to the racks instead of queued behind an interconnection request. A sealed subsea variant condenses straight into seawater.

Cluster to 100 MWe

Marine propulsion

No primary pumps means no pump noise. Suited to icebreakers, research vessels and quiet submerged platforms.

20 MWe class

Hydrogen and process heat

Delivered at 550–750 °C, the temperature band that high-temperature electrolysis and thermochemical cycles actually want.

>45 % to hydrogen

Space and lunar bases

One to five megawatts electric per module, under twelve tonnes, five years unattended. Heat is rejected by deployable radiators.

<12 t per module

Long-lived waste burning

Loaded with minor actinides instead of thorium, the same module destroys the waste other reactors leave behind.

Toxicity ÷100 target

06Safety

Nothing to scram

Conventional reactors are safe because engineered systems intervene. These are safe because the physics does not allow the accident in the first place.

No self-sustaining chain reaction

Effective multiplication is held below 0.9. Without the external neutron source there is no chain reaction to control.

Shutdown in under a microsecond

Fission follows the driver. Losing power to the accelerator is the shutdown, not a trigger for one.

No meltdown path

The lattice conducts heat away faster than decay heat can build a hot spot, with no coolant flow required.

Fission products stay put

Nanometre-scale closed cells trap xenon, krypton, iodine and caesium mechanically inside the fuel structure.

No high-pressure primary circuit

Heat leaves through sealed sodium heat pipes. There is no pressurised primary loop to depressurise.

Sealed, transport-safe fuel

Modules leave the factory fuelled but unactivated, and return sealed. No fissile material is handled on site.

Design status

Apogee Atomics is a development-stage company. The systems described here are protected designs supported by neutronic and thermal simulation. They have not yet been built, licensed or operated, and no regulator has reviewed them.

We say this plainly because the engineering timeline and the licensing timeline are the two things that decide whether this technology reaches a customer, and both belong in the first conversation rather than the last.

StagePre-prototype

Evidence baseMonte Carlo neutronics

Next gateMatrix sample fabrication

07Intellectual property

Patents filed

Twelve applications covering the material, the driver, the coupling, the control loop, the shielding and the deployment chassis. Titles are listed below. Filing offices, numbers, dates and claim text are not published.

No.Subject of the applicationStatus

01Composite thorium–graphene nuclear fuel matrix with deterministic geodesic architecture and controlled hierarchical porosityMaterial · processFiled

02Inertial-confinement fusion reactor with fast ignition, hybrid fission–fusion process and integrated tritium recoverySystem · processFiled

03Compact multi-modular plasma accelerator with inverted radial focusingDriverFiled

04Self-confining graphene–thorium foam core with geodesic structureCoreFiled

05Nanofractal spallation target with oscillating capillary coolingThermalFiled

06Adaptive control system using artificial intelligence and closed-loop neutron meteringControlFiled

07Inductive and magnetic beam-coupling interface without breach of containmentInterfaceFiled

08Monobloc module with multifunctional shielding built from active functionalised layersStructureFiled

09Selective transmutation system driven by a programmable neutron spectrumFuel cycleFiled

10Passive secure photonic interconnection between nuclear modules using encoded photonsNetworkingFiled

11Self-redeployment system with integrated crane and robotic transport platform for nuclear modulesLogisticsFiled

12Orbital and lunar reactor system with heat rejection by infrared radiationSpaceFiled

Applications are pending and unpublished. Filing jurisdictions, application numbers, priority dates, drawings and claim wording are withheld and are not disclosed on this site. Technical detail is released only under a signed confidentiality agreement, and export-controlled content only where the recipient is eligible to receive it.

08Investors

The case, without the hedging

Advanced nuclear has a demand problem solved and a delivery problem unsolved. Buyers are signing power agreements years ahead of anything being built. What is missing is a reactor that can be manufactured rather than constructed.

Why this approach

Most small modular reactors shrink a conventional plant. The cost stays proportional to the steel, the concrete and the years of site work. We start from a different place: one printed material that performs four jobs at once, driven by a source that can be switched off.

Removing the pressure vessel, the primary pumps and the criticality control removes most of what makes a reactor expensive to build and slow to license.

What we are selling

Factory-built modules sold or leased, with fuel and end-of-life return included
Long-term power and heat agreements for data centres and industrial sites
Waste-burning service contracts for utilities and reprocessing operators
Licensing of the fuel matrix to reactor builders outside our own markets

What actually has to be proven

Fabricating the lattice at reactor scale with reproducible wall thickness
Lattice behaviour under sustained fast-neutron flux and thermal cycling
Accelerator brightness and stability at the required duty cycle
Tritium retention, extraction and accounting in a solid breeder
A licensing pathway for a subcritical, accelerator-driven design

Where capital goes

Fuel-matrix laboratory: deposition, sintering, characterisation
Irradiation campaigns at partner research facilities
Accelerator bench and beam-coupling demonstrator
Regulatory engagement and licensing groundwork
Continued prosecution and international extension of the patent family

Phase 01

Material

Produce and characterise centimetre-scale lattice samples with thorium and lithium layers in place.

Phase 02

Neutron validation

Irradiate samples at an external facility and compare measured behaviour against the simulation model.

Phase 03

Integrated bench

Couple a compact accelerator to a subcritical assembly and demonstrate control and shutdown end to end.

Phase 04

First module

Build and licence a containerised demonstration unit at a host site with a named offtaker.

Request the data room Review the IP position

09Careers

Who we are hiring

Small team, long problem. We are looking for people who want to build the first article rather than review someone else's. Roles are open in the United States and in Europe, on site and hybrid.

R01Reactor physicist, neutronicsCore · simulationSenior

The work

Own the neutronic model of both systems. Build the unit-cell and full-core models, quantify multiplication and breeding ratio against porosity, enrichment and thorium loading, and turn simulation output into design constraints the rest of the team can use.

We are looking for

PhD or equivalent experience in reactor physics or nuclear engineering
Monte Carlo transport in production use, typically MCNP or Serpent
Subcritical or accelerator-driven systems, or thorium fuel cycles
Comfort defending a number to people who will build hardware from it

R02Materials scientist, carbon nanostructuresFuel matrix · fabricationSenior / lead

The work

Take the lattice from a drawing to a part. Template fabrication, graphene deposition, atomic layer deposition of oxide and barrier layers, surface functionalisation, sintering and consolidation, then the characterisation that proves what you made is what you designed.

We are looking for

Hands-on CVD, ALD, sol-gel or spark plasma sintering experience
Graphene foams, aerogels or architected porous ceramics
Electron microscopy and thermal conductivity measurement
Actinide or surrogate handling experience is a strong advantage

R03Accelerator and plasma physicistDriver · beamSenior

The work

Design the compact proton source: wakefield structure, density-gradient focusing, module stacking and stability at duty cycle, then the magnetic transport that carries the beam through an unbroken containment wall.

We are looking for

Laser or beam-driven plasma wakefield acceleration
Particle-in-cell simulation and beam dynamics
High-power laser systems or high-gradient RF structures
Experience running an experimental beamline, not only modelling one

R04Thermal and heat-pipe engineerCooling · power conversionMid / senior

The work

Get the heat from a pore wall to a turbine. Sodium heat pipe design and testing, oscillating capillary loops for the spallation target, and the supercritical CO₂ Brayton loop that has to fit inside the same container.

We are looking for

Liquid-metal heat pipes or two-phase passive cooling
Supercritical CO₂ or closed Brayton cycle design
High-temperature materials compatibility and corrosion
Test rig design, instrumentation and data reduction

R05Control systems and machine learning engineerInstrumentation · autonomyMid / senior

The work

Build the closed loop between in-core neutron detectors and the driver. Predictive reactivity control, sub-millisecond response, and a deterministic safety layer that overrides the model whenever prediction and measurement diverge.

We are looking for

Real-time and safety-critical embedded control
State estimation, model predictive control or reinforcement learning
Radiation instrumentation and detector signal processing
Certified system experience in nuclear, aerospace or rail

R06Tritium and radiochemistry engineerFuel cycleMid / senior

The work

Own the tritium path: retention in the lithium layer, thermal extraction, purification, accounting and recycling back into fuel pellets, plus the permeation barriers that keep it where it belongs.

We are looking for

Tritium handling, breeder blankets or hydrogen isotope separation
Lithium ceramics and their behaviour under irradiation
Nuclear material accountancy and licensing documentation
Rigour with paperwork as well as with chemistry

R07Structural and shielding engineerModule · transportMid

The work

Design the box everything lives in: layered shielding, embedded sensing, transport loads by road, rail, sea and air, self-levelling deployment, and stacking of modules into clusters.

We are looking for

Radiation shielding design and dose calculation
Structural analysis of transport packages or pressure boundaries
Composite and multilayer material design
Type B package or equivalent regulatory experience welcome

R08Licensing and regulatory affairs leadRegulatorySenior

The work

Open a path for a subcritical, accelerator-driven, factory-fuelled reactor that does not fit existing categories. Pre-application engagement, safety case strategy, export control, and the standards work that has to happen before a first-of-a-kind can be licensed.

We are looking for

Direct experience with a nuclear regulator, ideally the NRC
Advanced reactor or research reactor licensing
Export control and non-proliferation frameworks
Willingness to argue a novel case rather than cite a precedent

R09Manufacturing and systems engineerProductionMid / senior

The work

Turn one-off laboratory processes into a production line: yield, inspection, tolerance, supply chain for enriched lithium and thorium feedstock, and the systems engineering that keeps eleven subsystems converging on one module.

We are looking for

Scale-up of advanced materials or precision components
Quality systems in a regulated industry
Requirements management and interface control
Nuclear supply chain and qualification experience is a plus

R10Development and finance leadCommercialSenior

The work

Build the commercial side: project finance structures for first-of-a-kind units, offtake and power purchase agreements, government and export credit programmes, and the financial model that connects fabrication cost to delivered price per megawatt hour.

We are looking for

Energy project finance or infrastructure investment
Power purchase agreement negotiation
Ability to read a technical risk register and price it
Comfort working years ahead of first revenue

Apply or introduce yourself

We also take speculative applications. If your field is on this page but your title is not, write anyway and say what you would build first. Some roles involve controlled technical information and may require eligibility under applicable export control rules.

10Contact

Get in touch

One address, three inboxes. Tell us which one you need and we will answer with a person rather than a form response.

Registered office

Apogee Atomics Inc. 8 The Green, Suite B
Dover, DE 19901
United States

IncorporationDelaware stock corporation

CountyKent

Direct lines

Investorsinvestors@apogeeatomics.com

Careerscareers@apogeeatomics.com

Partnershipspartners@apogeeatomics.com

For technical material, send your affiliation and what you need it for. Anything beyond what is on this page moves under a confidentiality agreement first.