It's Wednesday. Most reactors are judged by the electricity they make. Antares has one that has never made a watt, and it just locked in fuel through the end of the decade.
In today's edition:
โข๏ธ Big Story: Antares secures fuel for its first power-producing microreactor
โก Quick Hits: Ford's cheaper home backup, BNEF's 30% storage bump, Canada's biggest behind-the-meter battery
๐ฐ Capital: CenterPoint's $70.7B grid plan
๐ Policy Watch: Portugal mandates grid-forming batteries, San Diego pauses data centers
๐ Chart of the Day: inverter factories outrun demand
The Big Story
Antares secures BWXT fuel for its 2027 power-producing microreactor
Antares will run its Mark-1 microreactor on TRISO fuel from BWXT under an agreement that covers supply through the end of the decade, POWER reported. BWXT Advanced Fuels will make the fuel in Lynchburg, Virginia, starting with an initial allocation of one metric ton of uranium. The deal follows DOE's Oct. 23 approval of the Mark-1 Nuclear Safety Design Agreement, a design-stage approval that does not authorize operation.
"Mark-1 will be the first full-scale electricity-producing microreactor test in the United States. Operating at full electrical power for six months gives us comprehensive test data on every major subsystem and how they behave together." Jordan Bramble, CEO and co-founder, Antares
Mark-1 is slated to run at Idaho National Laboratory in 2027 for six months at full electrical power, the company said.
Antares' Mark-0 reached zero-power criticality on June 4 on BWXT fuel, a first under DOE's Reactor Pilot Program, without producing electricity.
Military deployments are planned from 2028, including three R1 units, rated at 100 kWe to 1 MWe, at Fort Bragg under the Army's Janus program.
Source: POWER
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Quick Hits
Technology milestones from across the grid
From pickup trucks to cement kilns, batteries keep finding new jobs.
Ford said its $28,350 Fathom pickup will carry an onboard inverter that can back up a home through an AC bidirectional charger priced at roughly half its $1,300 Charge Station Pro, and it is working with utilities on common interconnection standards. Canary Media
BloombergNEF raised its US storage outlook by 30%, now forecasting 213.9 GW of cumulative deployments by 2030 and 434.4 GW by 2036, with on-site data center storage jumping to 4.9 GW this year from 500 MW in 2025. Utility Dive
Rodan Energy will own and operate a 50 MWh behind-the-meter battery at St. Marys Cement's plant in Bowmanville, Ontario, for peak shaving at no upfront cost to the host, which it calls Canada's largest. PR Newswire
Toshiba is pairing a 2 MW/667 kWh fast-response SCiB lithium titanate battery with a 2 MW/15.33 MWh conventional battery and 10 MW of solar at Mongolia's Darkhan substation, a hybrid design due in December 2027. pv magazine
Data center opposition dipped to 71% from 75% of Americans who would oppose one nearby, according to a Heatmap Pro/Embold poll, with Republican support rising to 34% from 23%. Heatmap
The Capital Stack
CenterPoint adds $4 billion to its grid build as Houston load climbs
CenterPoint Energy raised its 10-year capital plan through 2035 by $4 billion to $70.7 billion, $51.5 billion of it for electric, Utility Dive reported. The utility expects 14 GW of new demand by 2030 and has 17 GW submitted to ERCOT's large-load process, of which it expects 12 GW to be eligible.
Source: Utility Dive
Also in the capital stack:
Mitsubishi Power is investing $490 million in a 450,000-square-foot expansion of its Savannah, Georgia, gas turbine plant, adding more than 220 jobs as its turbine backlog reaches 35 GW. Power Engineering
Policy Watch
Portugal now requires grid-forming capability and synthetic inertia from new battery plants rated 45 MW or more or connected to the transmission grid, for connection requests filed from Oct. 23, making grid-forming inverters a condition of market entry. ESS News
San Diego's City Council unanimously passed a 45-day data center moratorium that can be extended to nearly two years, prompted by a proposed 400 MW project on federal land the rule may not reach, as local siting fights increasingly steer where AI load lands. KPBS
FirstEnergy's Ohio distribution rate case for more than 2 million customers has drawn 22 intervenors, with clean energy groups pushing for demand response and time-varying rates ahead of a PUCO staff report due Nov. 30. Canary Media
Chart of the Day
Inverter factories outrun demand worldwide
Global inverter manufacturing capacity reached 1,377 GW in the third quarter against 825 GW of trailing 12-month production, a utilization rate of about 60%, according to PV Tech Research. US capacity passed 60 GW a year, with more than 70 GW forecast by year-end.
Source: PV Tech ยท October 26, 2026
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