AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct 7, 2026--
Last Energy, an advanced nuclear technology company, announced today that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has approved the company's Documented Safety Analysis (DSA) for its pilot reactor at Texas A&M–RELLIS.
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The DSA is the final and most comprehensive safety analysis in the DOE authorization process. It documents in detail how Last Energy’s reactor and facility will be operated safely, building on the company's Preliminary Documented Safety Analysis (PDSA), which DOE approved in May 2026. With DSA approval complete, Last Energy moves into DOE's readiness review, the final step before DOE can issue startup authorization for criticality and reactor operations.
Last Energy's pilot reactor uses the same full-scale reactor core as its commercial reactor design. By demonstrating a full-scale core at RELLIS, Last Energy can validate commercial-ready performance and advance into power generation.
The project also uses low-enriched uranium (LEU) fuel, demonstrating a pathway to fleet-scale deployment built around an established commercial supply chain for off-the-shelf fuel.
In August 2025, Last Energy was selected to participate in DOE's Reactor Pilot Program, created under President Trump's Executive Order 14301, “Reforming Nuclear Reactor Testing at the Department of Energy.” The program is designed to accelerate reactor demonstration by authorizing test reactors through DOE's process.
Last Energy's project at RELLIS is a direct bridge to Last Energy's commercial PWR-20 deployment model. The PWR-20 is a 20 MWe micro modular nuclear plant designed for factory fabrication, standard road transport, rapid on-site assembly, and 24/7 baseload power delivery to industrial customers, data centers, and other high-energy users.
NOTES TO EDITORS
About Last Energy:
Last Energy’s pilot reactor facility at Texas A&M RELLIS campus.
STOCKHOLM (AP) — Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai won the Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday for their discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis.
“Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai have provided a solution to a chemical mystery that is over a century old: how homochirality can emerge spontaneously,” Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said in a news release. “The chemical reactions they have developed are spectacular.”
Kagan, 95 years old and born in France, is affiliated with Université Paris-Sud in Orsay, France, and Soai, born in Japan, with the Tokyo University of Science.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the winner in Stockholm.
Last year, three scientists won the chemistry Nobel for their development of new molecular structures that can trap vast quantities of gas inside, laying the groundwork to potentially suck greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere or harvest moisture from desert environments.
This year's prizes began with the Nobel for medicine, awarded Monday to three scientists whose work led to a tool that uses light to help unravel how the brain works. The physics award Tuesday recognized a scientist's efforts to demystify a rare group of neutrinos.
The literature prize is set to be awarded Thursday. After Friday’s peace prize is awarded, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences will be announced Monday.
The prize money this year is 12 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2 million), whether for an individual, a small group of laureates or an organization.
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This story has been corrected to clarify that Kagan, and not Soai, is 95 years old.
Dazio reported from Berlin.
AP Nobel Prizes: https://apnews.com/hub/nobel-prizes
Portraits of Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai are shown on the screen as they are awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, Sweden, on Oct. 7, 2026. Photo: (Fredrik Sandberg/TT News Agency via AP)
FILE - A close-up view of a Nobel Prize medal at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Md., Dec. 8, 2020. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
