Clean tech startup Fluxnium found a way to tap 50,000 years’ worth of nuclear fuel; plus, Hang Ten Systems nabbed another $53m

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The U.S. has ambitious plans to triple the capacity of its nuclear power plants by twenty fifty, but that goal might hit a roadblock if plant operators can't buy fuel at reasonable prices. Prices for yellowcake, a form of unrefined uranium, are up seventy-five percent in the last five years. That's according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Further complicating matters, the U.S. doesn't have significant resources within its borders, unless you consider the ocean. The ocean has over four billion metric tons of uranium in it, enough for fifty thousand years or so. Jeff Green, founder and CEO of the clean tech Fluxnium, told TechCrunch it's like a thousand times more than all identified hard rock mines combined. Fluxnium thinks it has solved the problem of how to extract uranium from seawater. Using technology developed at the U.S. Department of Energy, the company has an approach that could be competitive with existing uranium mines. The startup has been working in stealth until now to develop the new technology. Fluxnium gave TechCrunch an exclusive look at its technology. The startup recently closed a seven million dollar seed round led by Congruent Ventures with participation from Active Impact Investments and Constellation Energy, which operates the largest nuclear fleet in the U.S. Fluxnium is emerging as the nuclear industry in the U.S. undergoes a renaissance. Tech companies have backed several nuclear startups as they search for new sources of electricity to power their AI data centers. Green's timing is good, but perhaps not surprising. He is a repeat founder, having helped launch Stamps.com back in nineteen ninety-six, desalination startup NanoH2O in two thousand five, and carbon removal startup 1PointFive in twenty twenty. He has a nose for where the world is going, and he thinks uranium presents a pretty big opportunity. While uranium is not rare as elements go, uranium mines are not plentiful or evenly distributed. Green says if you're in the West, two-thirds, three-quarters of the world's uranium supply comes from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Russia, Namibia, Niger, China. There's geopolitical risk. Those concerns have been bubbling under the surface of the nuclear industry for decades. Green said, "Now with this new nuclear renaissance, if demand comes the way it's being projected, we are structurally short uranium." But those concerns would evaporate if someone could find a way to economically extract uranium from seawater. Fluxnium's technology uses specially made polymer fibers that attract the uranium that's dissolved in