NuCube

NuCube builds a microreactor that pairs heat-pipe cooling with thermophotovoltaic power conversion. No turbines, no moving parts. Small enough to ship to a remote site, sealed enough to leave there. It runs on TRISO fuel, sheds heat passively, needs no water, and delivers heat above a thousand degrees, which is what a cement kiln or a chemical process actually needs and what almost nothing else clean can supply.

Off-grid communities, defense installations, industrial heat: the places still on diesel because nothing else has reached them. Solid-state thermal-to-electric conversion has been circling the field for a decade; heat-pipe microreactors for almost as long. NuCube is the first team we've seen serious enough to bring both into one design, and credible enough to walk it through the NRC.