Start-up wants to expand nuclear power in Arkansas - Arkansas Times

The two nuclear reactors at Arkansas Nuclear One in Russellville came online in the 1970s and '80s. Since then, the subject of additional nuclear power plants in the state comes and goes. But the landscape, like technology, has changed, and the demand on the country's electrical grid, which had been flat for many years, has started rising again. With the advent of artificial intelligence and its insatiable need for electricity and the prediction that the country's overall electricity consumption will grow by half in the next quarter century, nuclear energy is getting another look. It is with that backdrop that three men, all of whom hail from Arkansas, want to develop more nuclear sites in Arkansas, either assisting others in operating them - or running them themselves. And while stories that spent fuel rods are piling up in the parking lot at Arkansas Nuclear One are decidedly not true, figuring out what to do with residuals that can remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years remains a challenge. The three men behind Blue Diamond Atomics - physicist James Hendren, attorney/physicist Brian Meadors and engineer John Warmack - think they have a solution. So this is a...

Source: https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2026/08/05/start-up-wants-to-expand-nuclear-power-in-arkansas