Project Omega Raises 80 Million Dollars to Recycle Spent Nuclear Fuel as Babcock and Wilcox Backlog Hits 2.5 Billion Dollars
Two companies at very different stages of the power business reported on November 9. Project Omega, a startup that wants to recycle used nuclear fuel, raised an $80 million Series A. Babcock & Wilcox, a boiler and power plant builder founded in the 1860s, reported a third quarter in which its backlog grew almost sevenfold on demand from utilities and data centers. One is a bet on what comes next for nuclear waste. The other is a read on how much new power is being ordered right now.
Project Omega: an $80 million bet on used fuel
Project Omega’s round was led by B Capital, with noa VC, 645 Ventures and other investors in nuclear and national security. Existing backers including Starship Ventures, Mantis Ventures and Decisive Point also put in money. B Capital’s Jeff Johnson joins the board. The company has offices in Newport, Rhode Island and Hailey, Idaho, and a cold lab in Fall River, Massachusetts. It didn’t disclose a valuation.
What it calls a nuclear refinery is a pyroprocessing plant for used reactor fuel. Pyroprocessing uses molten salts and electricity rather than the water-based chemistry of the PUREX process that France uses. The company says its version recovers useful isotopes such as strontium-90, does not separate pure plutonium, and can cut waste volume by up to 90%. The recovered material is meant to go two ways: as feedstock for new reactors, and as fuel for long-lived power sources that turn radioactive decay directly into electricity, which the company calls radiovoltaics.
Founder and CEO Stafford Sheehan points to the feedstock: the US holds nearly 100,000 metric tons of used nuclear fuel, most of it in pools and dry casks at reactor sites, with no permanent repository. Project Omega has worked with Idaho National Laboratory on an ARPA-E project, run a strontium-90 power demonstration at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and taken part in DARPA’s Rads to Watts program.
Separate what is announced from what exists. The money will fund manufacturing of its X Series, modular power units for remote and military sites that run on batteries, solar and wind first, with isotope power added later. It will also start construction of a fuel recycling facility, with details promised in the coming months. The release mentions no Nuclear Regulatory Commission license, and any plant handling used fuel will need one. That process is where the timeline will really be set.
Babcock & Wilcox: the order book fills up
Babcock & Wilcox’s numbers show the other side of the market. Third-quarter revenue doubled to $290.8 million from $139.2 million, including $77.8 million from a large project the company calls Base Electron. Bookings rose 112% to $228 million, and backlog reached $2.5 billion, up 571% from a year earlier. The company says its pipeline tops $16 billion, including about 6 GW of new power projects for utilities, industrial customers and data centers. A data center power project in North Dakota is on track, with long-lead equipment in production and permits largely in hand.
Profit is thinner than the headline. Net income of $93.9 million includes an $85.1 million non-cash gain on customer warrants; adjusted net income was $4.8 million. Adjusted EBITDA was $17.7 million. B&W kept its 2026 adjusted EBITDA target of $80 million to $105 million and issued a 2027 target of $125 million to $140 million. It also warned about shortages of welders and electricians pushing up construction costs.
The common thread
Data center demand is pulling every kind of firm power into the market at once: gas and steam plants now, from builders like B&W, and nuclear later. Used fuel recycling only matters if new reactors get built in volume. B&W’s backlog says the demand is real. Project Omega’s challenge is to have a licensed plant ready by the time the reactors that would use its fuel come online.