Nuclear startup Terrestrial Energy goes public via SPAC, netting $280 million in merger
Terrestrial Power, a small nuclear startup, merged with an acquisition firm on Wednesday.
The Canadian firm is growing small modular reactors and expects to internet $280 million from the deal. Earlier than the SPAC merger, Terrestrial Energy had raised $94 million, in accordance with PitchBook. The mixed entity expects to checklist on Nasdaq underneath the image ISMR.
The ticker is a reference to Terrestrial Power’s taste of small modular reactor (SMR), which it calls an integral molten salt reactor. In such a tool, uranium gas is blended with numerous salts, corresponding to lithium fluoride or sodium fluoride, that serve to droop the nuclear gas and act because the reactor’s predominant coolant.
Terrestrial Power’s reactor core is designed to be totally changed each seven years, partially to move off a number of the issues earlier molten salt reactors skilled like corrosion. The reactor core consists of not solely the gas and graphite modulators that regulate the velocity of the fission reactions, but additionally the warmth exchangers and pumps that preserve the salt cool and flowing.
The startup is focusing on a spread of markets, together with electrical energy, knowledge facilities, and industrial purposes that require warmth.
There are lots of extant proposals to construct commercial-scale molten salt reactors, however up to now, none has been constructed. The essential know-how was invented within the Fifties, however two experiments from that period have been plagued with problems.
Nuclear energy has acquired renewed consideration as electrification of buildings and transportation, coupled with the rapid growth of data centers, has despatched electrical energy demand hovering.
Tech corporations have change into more and more within the know-how as a doable answer to the electrical energy necessities of AI coaching and inference. Google, Meta, Amazon, and OpenAI’s Sam Altman have all picked a horse within the race to develop superior nuclear reactors.
Terrestrial Power isn’t the primary SMR startup to SPAC — the Altman-backed Oklo accomplished its deal in 2024 — and given present hype round nuclear energy, it’s doable it gained’t be the final.
