Nuclear licensing
Gain is meaningless for fission, so the comparable question is regulatory position — the thing that actually gates deployment.
Stage inflation is the dominant error in this sector. “NRC approved” frequently describes a pre-application meeting or acceptance for docketing, and a design approval is not permission to build anything anywhere. Where evidence is ambiguous we assign the lower stage.
1 of 8 milestones carry a docket or accession number a reader can look up. The rest are research notes without an anchor, and are marked as such. An anchored record and an unanchored one must not look alike.
| Organisation | Stage | Date | Regulator | Anchor | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TerraPower | Application submitted Construction permit application submitted for Natrium (Kemmerer, Wyoming) | 2024-03 | US Nuclear Regulatory Commission | no anchor | Hermes – Kairos Application |
| X-energy | Application submitted Construction permit application submitted for Long Mott (Dow Seadrift) | 2025-03 | US Nuclear Regulatory Commission | no anchor | Hermes – Kairos Application |
| NuScale Power | Design approval or certification NRC design approval for the NuScale Power Module | — | US Nuclear Regulatory Commission | no anchor | Hermes – Kairos Application |
| Rolls-Royce SMR | Design approval or certification UK Generic Design Assessment | — | Office for Nuclear Regulation | no anchor | Generic Design Assessment |
| Kairos Power | Construction permit issued achieved NRC construction permit issued for Hermes test reactor | 2023-12-14 | US Nuclear Regulatory Commission | ADAMS ML23338A258 · Docket 05007513 | Hermes – Kairos Application |
| Kairos Power | Construction permit issued NRC construction permit issued for Hermes 2 | 2024-11 | US Nuclear Regulatory Commission | no anchor | Hermes – Kairos Application |
| Oklo | First criticality retracted Aurora first criticality Seed placeholder created to exercise the pipeline, never sourced. Its target dates were illustrative, and a reader on /licensing/ could not distinguish it from a sourced milestone. Retracted rather than deleted so the record of having published it survives. | 2027 | US Nuclear Regulatory Commission | no anchor | Hermes – Kairos Application |
| Oklo | Application denied NRC denies Aurora combined licence application | 2022-01 | US Nuclear Regulatory Commission | no anchor | Hermes – Kairos Application |
Target-date slip
Previously stated targets are kept rather than overwritten. A date that has moved several times tells you something the current target conceals on its own.
Oklo — Aurora first criticality
- 2024 (said 2020)
- 2026 (said 2023)
- 2027 current