NANO Nuclear Energy and its engineering partner Fortil have nearly completed conceptual design work on the fuel handling and storage system for NANO Nuclear's KRONOS MMR reactor, the company said July 22, 2026. The milestone establishes the technical basis for the subsystem, which manages the safe handling and storage of nuclear fuel throughout reactor operations.
Fortil's nuclear engineering team led the work, evaluating design options against program requirements, defining how the subsystem connects to the rest of the reactor, and producing engineering documentation to guide the next phase. NANO Nuclear and Fortil now plan to start preliminary design, adding more analytical detail and further integrating the subsystem with the rest of the KRONOS MMR architecture.
The engineering milestone follows regulatory progress on the reactor itself. Earlier this year, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission accepted NANO Nuclear's Construction Permit Application for a KRONOS MMR unit planned at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and began formal review. NANO Nuclear said the review schedule could allow initial construction to start in the second half of 2027, subject to regulatory approval. The company describes KRONOS MMR, a stationary high-temperature gas-cooled reactor designed to generate power, as the first commercially-ready microreactor program to reach this stage of NRC licensing.
James Walker, NANO Nuclear's chief executive, said the collaboration continues to "systematically reduce technical risk and build the engineering basis" for the reactor's path to licensing and construction.
Fortil, based in Ollioules, France, is an engineering and consulting firm with about 2,500 employees operating across France, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and North America, with a nuclear practice spanning mechanical and systems engineering, nuclear safety, instrumentation and control, and radiation protection.
