Kansas will get the world's first mile-deep nuclear reactor and the groundbreaking is next week

[Shrek]

https://lawrencekstimes.com/2025/12/04/kns-nuclear-reactor/

Parsons, Kansas, will be the site of a California startup’s first ever 1-mile-deep nuclear reactor — with support from county commissioners, both Republican Kansas U.S. senators and Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s administration.

Deep Fission will hold a ceremonial groundbreaking on Tuesday at Great Plains Industrial Park. Company leaders hope to receive U.S. Department of Energy authorization and get its nuclear reactor up and running by next Fourth of July.

The company is part of a presidential pilot program that aims to demonstrate new reactors by then. After that, Deep Fission hopes to pursue commercial operations.

“The industrial park is looking to bring in, to attract industry and possibly data centers or other large uses of electricity,” Deep Fission CEO Liz Muller said in an interview with the Kansas News Service. “But in order to attract them, it needs to have a source of electricity.”

Deep Fission is an advanced nuclear company founded in 2023 that promises to place small nuclear reactors at the bottom of 30-inch wide, mile-deep boreholes.

[lapfog_1]

1. the numbers don't add up

30 inch wide nuke plant dropped 1 mile into a steel lined bore hole... filled with water, essentially becoming a 1 mile deep boiling water pot, generating like 40 MWatt of electricity ( making some assumptions about "10,000 homes" ). Runs for X years ( 2 to 7 years is quite a range ) and then they seal it up and hope the water stays in the mile deep shaft for the next N years. I guess no refueling or anything...

But datacenters are multi-gigawatt ( let's say just 1 gigawatt )... you would need 25 such reactors and 25 bore holes... every 5 years... each such reactor would need 50 million gallons of water ( in a closed system ).

This, of course, doesn't account for the water needed to cool the AI datacenter.

[txwhitedove]

2. Hmm, sounds like the beginning of a horror story to me.

[slightlv]

3. I just woke up

And my mind isn't fully functioning yet. How far is this from the aquifer? Are we in danger of destroying one of the largest underground water systems that supplies many states?

Nuclear has always scared me, I'll admit. But this doesn't sound good. It sounds like they took the least of states and are willing to destroy it for what? 10000 homes? But we have miles and miles of flat plains that could support solar and we can't do that?

[Nigrum Cattus]

4. nuclear power is a tech of the past, not the future

the only reason we have nuclear power is to justify
nuclear weapons. Renewables are the future/present.
All we need to do is have a reliable battery storage system.