Project Omega raised an $80 million Series A led by B Capital to begin building a spent nuclear fuel recycling pilot and advance its power products, the company announced November 9.
The company’s launched X Series combines batteries, generators and controls. It plans to add solar and wind inputs before incorporating isotope power, which remains a future capability.
Omega is developing a recycling process that uses molten salt and electricity to recover useful materials from spent reactor fuel, with plans to supply new reactor feedstock and isotopes. Its isotope devices would convert radioactive decay into electricity for equipment such as remote sensors. Such batteries generally deliver less power but last longer than lithium-ion cells, E&E News reported in February.
The round is more than six times the $12 million seed financing Omega disclosed in February, led by Starship Ventures. That announcement described a working proof of concept developed with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
In April, Omega announced an ARPA-E-backed project with Idaho National Laboratory to test its recycling process at kilogram scale and generate the engineering data needed for a pilot plant.
A potential application is a spacecraft beacon that would retain an independent power supply when a satellite suffers an electrical failure. Omega and insurance broker Charter Space announced an October study of that concept and how persistent power might affect mission recovery and insurance economics.