Carolyn DiPaoloA nuclear energy expert applauds the Palm Beach Gardens firm’s pursuit of portable power and has some notes.
When energy startup Ampera opened its Palm Beach Gardens headquarters last month, it also shared more insight into its big bet on nuclear power.
In interviews published the next day in Power magazine, company leaders outlined their plan to use naturally occurring thorium, not enriched uranium, to power the deployable energy systems they plan to design and manufacture in Palm Beach County.
Thorium is naturally abundant and far less radioactive than uranium in its raw state.
Ampera would breed the thorium into uranium by bombarding it with neutrons, which takes roughly 20 to 30 days inside the core, the magazine reported. Once bred, the uranium would sustain the energy-producing fission process for the life of the Ampera reactor.
Ampera intends to serve data centers, maritime shipping and defense operations. The units would be leased to customers, operated remotely by Ampera and have a 30-year lifespan.
In the room at the April 8 opening celebration were life-size concept models of the Ampera systems designed to fit into a standard 40-foot shipping container. That makes transport possible by train, truck or ship.
Ampera intends to produce 330 energy systems a year, founder and CEO Brian Matthews told guests that day. “Now, that sounds unbelievable,” he said, “but the demand is there.”
The company is seeking a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to manufacture its modular reactors. It is developing a working prototype.
A portable nuclear reactor is a great idea, Swadesh Mahajan of the University of Texas at Austin told Stet News. He pointed to two key challenges:
Cost
“From the outside, when I look at it, it does seem to me that it’s not going to be an easily economically profitable thing,” he said. Breeding thorium into a nuclear fuel is not cheap, he said.
On the other hand, the professor said, “The buyer may say, ‘Look, price is irrelevant as long as you put something just outside my door which is totally dependable.’”
One way Ampera plans to keep costs down is by mass-producing the units, the company says. It is also pursuing government grants.
Nuclear waste
“In all nuclear programs, there is always the problem of, ‘What are we going to do with the waste?’” Mahajan noted. “There is a very strong public reaction to nuclear waste.”
Nuclear waste from uranium used in commercial plants remains dangerously radioactive for thousands of years. In the United States, most commercial waste sits in temporary storage at the plants where it was created.
Ampera’s plan is to keep the spent fuel locked inside the unit’s factory-sealed core, Ampera spokesperson Greg Brostowicz told Stet.
The core will be designed so that it cannot be opened. Accessing the fuel would require, as the company describes it, “a government-style operation.”
That core would be safely placed at an approved site for nuclear storage, Brostowicz said. It could be government-owned or private, he said.
Cost and waste are actually market advantages for our technology, company leaders say.
Having a concise footprint and limited infrastructure, along with a high energy-density make for turnkey power purchase agreement opportunities for customers with low cost per kilowatt.
The waste is contained, manageable and a very small fraction of the half-life compared to uranium, they say.
New company, big idea
Ampera launched in 2025 as a stealth startup and announced its intentions in November. It has entered a field that Power magazine reported has ballooned from 10 startups to more than 100 in the last five years.
The company has lined up powerful partnerships.
- In June, Super Micro Computer, a Fortune 500 cloud computer company and AI data center supplier, paid $6 million for an 11% stake.
- Last month, Scorpio Tankers announced a $10 million investment to jointly develop and deploy floating nuclear power barges in the near term and nuclear-powered vessels over the longer term.
Ampera founder Matthews, 50, was born in the United Kingdom and earned degrees in physics from the University of Birmingham and the University of Bristol, both in England.
In 2015, he founded a Palm City-based 3D metal-printing company called Additec. Ampera plans to use Additec’s defense-grade printing technology in its energy systems.
The startup plans to grow to 2,500 employees within five years. (Job openings are here.)
“The next generation of energy is not going to be built slowly. It’s going to be delivered quickly by people and companies that move very fast,” Matthews told the audience last month. “Our progress and advancements are measured in days, not months and years. And next time you come back and see us, it’ll be real.”
Go deeper: Inside Ampera’s bet on subcritical thorium microreactors. (Power magazine)
