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.

Two nuclear stories this week, one fission and one fusion, ended up being about the same thing. Who makes the heavy hardware, and where. Oklo reserves forging capacity through 2035 Oklo reported third quarter 2026 results on November 6 and paired them with a manufacturing deal. It will reserve capacity at a planned U.S. Forged Rings campus in Hertford County, North Carolina, for large stainless-steel parts of its Aurora powerhouses: reactor vessels, lids and supporting structures.

For a year the story of US clean energy policy looked like a straight line downhill. Credits cut, grants cancelled, offshore wind ordered to stop. Look closer and the line has kinks in it, and most of them were put there by federal judges. CrossGov.com, a site that covers US government with a federal focus, has just published four posts that trace what’s actually left of federal support for renewables and electric vehicles.

Two energy financings closed within hours of each other, aimed at the same shortage from opposite ends. Antares, developing one-megawatt reactors for United States military bases, raised $370 million in equity and $100 million in debt in a round co-led by Paradigm and Caffeinated. French carrier Orange and infrastructure investor Morrison agreed to build a data center platform in France targeting 400 megawatts, backed by a €3 billion investment program.

Oklo Inc. has cleared a major regulatory milestone for its Groves Isotope Test Reactor in Lockhart, Texas, after the U.S. Department of Energy granted startup authorization under the agency’s Reactor Pilot Program. The approval lets Oklo begin loading nuclear fuel, run startup testing, and move toward first criticality at the facility. The pace of the buildout stands out. Oklo went from breaking ground to DOE startup authorization in just over ten months, a span that included constructing the reactor facility, standing up the operating organization, training personnel, writing nuclear programs and procedures, and sourcing fuel and major equipment commercially.

President Trump’s Executive Order 14301, “Reforming Nuclear Reactor Testing at the Department of Energy,” attached a hard deadline to America’s nuclear ambitions: at least three participants in the Department of Energy’s Reactor Pilot Program were meant to achieve criticality by July 4, 2026. That deadline has now passed, and it functions as a real-time stress test of how fast the “nuclear renaissance” rhetoric can translate into operating reactors. The pilot program mechanism.

The rapid shift to nuclear power in France is often hailed as a benchmark for efficient and effective climate action. Beginning in the 1970s, France embarked on an ambitious nuclear energy program that has since positioned it as a global leader in nuclear power generation. Today, approximately 70% of France’s electricity is derived from nuclear energy. This transition was motivated by the oil crises of the 1970s, which highlighted the need for energy security and independence.