By: Howard Morgan, Jeff Johnson, Gabe Greenbaum, Karly Wentz, Patrick Harmon, Nate Johnson and Eric Brook

 

B Capital is excited to lead Project Omega’s $80M Series A. Founded in 2025 and headquartered in Newport, Rhode Island, Project Omega is building the nuclear refineries for the next century of innovation, designed to transform used nuclear fuel^a into a strategic resource. Our investment thesis is based on the company doing this through addressing two critical challenges facing the U.S. nuclear industry: a growing stockpile of used fuel with no permanent disposal solution and a shortage of domestically produced fuel for the next generation of nuclear reactors.

Project Omega’s technology is designed to recover valuable materials from used fuel and convert them into two complementary product lines. The first is recycled nuclear fuel, including the capability to produce high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU)^b, a specialized fuel most advanced reactors require. The second is critical isotopes that power long-duration, solid-state power systems for defense, intelligence and space missions.

By developing both nuclear fuel recycling infrastructure and the power systems that use recovered isotopes, Project Omega has the potential to create two businesses from a single refining platform. We believe this approach positions the company at the intersection of several powerful trends: renewed investment in nuclear energy, growing electricity demand, domestic supply chain security and the need for reliable power in demanding environments.

 

A Refinery That Turns Waste into Two Product Lines
Project Omega’s platform uses a molten salt electrochemical process^c, in which used nuclear fuel is dissolved in high-temperature molten salt and its components are separated using electric current and the company’s novel inert anode technology. The approach has two structural advantages over the incumbent aqueous-based methods used in foreign reprocessing plants. First, it achieves high-purity separations without ever isolating pure plutonium, minimizing the proliferation risk^d that led the U.S. to abandon reprocessing in the first place.¹ Second, as a nonaqueous process it avoids the large secondary wastewater streams associated with aqueous methods, making for a cleaner process. The underlying technique also leverages commercially proven electrochemical metal refining methods.

What makes Project Omega’s model particularly distinctive is its ability to produce two valuable product lines from the same refining process. The same flowsheet that recovers uranium for reactor fuel also recovers high-value radioisotopes such as strontium-90. Those isotopes feed the company’s second product line, radioisotope power systems (RPS)^e, compact solid-state devices that convert the energy of radioactive decay into electricity.

Historically, limited commercial isotope supply constrained the development of isotope-powered devices, while the absence of scaled demand made investment in isotope recovery difficult to justify. By building both the refinery and the devices, Project Omega converts each product line into demand for the other.

 

Persistent Power Where Traditional Batteries and Generators Cannot Serve
Isotope power’s defining advantage is longevity. It has run more than two dozen U.S. space missions since 1961, including the Voyager probes, which are still returning data from interstellar space on power systems launched in 1977.² Yet RPSs have remained a limited, government-only capability, largely because isotope supply is scarce.

Project Omega’s RPS devices work with alpha- or beta-emitting isotopes rather than more hazardous gamma emitters, allowing devices to operate near humans.³ Radioisotopes already do exactly that safely every day; most household smoke detectors rely on a small amount of americium-241 to sense smoke.⁴ These isotopes enable an entirely new class of long-duration power systems for defense, space, remote infrastructure and other applications where conventional batteries cannot meet the mission: remote sensors, radars, drones, edge computing nodes and soldier-borne systems, where the power source limits mission life. Over time, the same isotope supply can also serve commercial, medical and scientific applications.

Under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)-funded SYMPHONEE program, Project Omega and its partners are engineering a new class of RPS devices designed to significantly increase power density and durability, using isotopes derived from recycled nuclear fuel.

 

Early Validation Across the Department of Energy and Department of Defense
Project Omega has moved quickly from founding to meaningful validation. In its first year of operation, the company demonstrated its core recycling technology in a laboratory setting, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) began testing and evaluating Project Omega’s RPS devices, successfully producing a working proof of concept within months.⁵

In April 2026, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) awarded Project Omega a contract, in partnership with Idaho National Laboratory (INL), to validate key components of its recycling platform, supporting prototype testing designed to generate the engineering data required for deployment at scale.⁶

Building on this progress, the company plans to construct a facility capable of processing multiple types of used nuclear fuel and recovering materials that can support advanced reactors, domestic isotope supply chains and next-generation power systems. The company has signed a letter of intent with a large U.S. nuclear utility covering both the supply of used fuel and the offtake of recycled fuel, providing an early indication of commercial interest.

Furthermore, a multi-organization team of Morgan State University, Northrop Grumman, PNNL and Project Omega were awarded a ~$3.4M contract under DARPA’s Rads to Watts program in 2026 to deliver on next-generation micro-RPS for extreme environments, spanning space missions, underwater infrastructure, remote sensors and military platforms.^7,8

 

A Team Built for Industrial Electrochemistry and Nuclear Regulation
Project Omega’s team is built for exactly the operations the company must execute on to scale: taking industrial electrochemistry from the lab to commercial scale, moving a first-of-its-kind facility through the U.S. regulatory system, selling nuclear fuel and serving the missions its power systems are designed for.

Founder and CEO Dr. Stafford Sheehan is a repeat hardtech founder with a track record of translating scientific innovation into industrial applications. He founded his first hardware company out of his Yale PhD work in chemistry, Catalytic Innovations, and then went to co-found Air Company, where he served as President and Chief Technology Officer, developing technology that converts atmospheric carbon dioxide into jet fuel and other products. The through-line of his career is taking novel electrochemical and catalytic processes from the lab to industrial deployment, the same discipline at the core of molten salt refining.

Chris Hanson, former chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), oversees the company’s licensing and regulatory strategy, bringing direct, firsthand insight to a scale-up path that requires commercial NRC licensing.⁹ Project Omega’s advisory board is chaired by Steve Kuczynski, former chairman and CEO of Southern Nuclear who oversaw the completion of Vogtle Units 3 and 4, the first newly constructed reactors in the U.S. in more than three decades.

Together with a broader team drawing on experience across the nuclear industry, national laboratories and defense community, these leaders bring complementary expertise to the technical and regulatory challenges of commercializing Project Omega’s platform.

 

Fuel Is the Binding Constraint on American Nuclear
For more than 50 years, the U.S. has treated used nuclear fuel as a liability. Commercial recycling ended in the 1970s over proliferation concerns, and more than 90,000 metric tons of used fuel sit in storage across the U.S.^10,11 With no permanent repository opened, taxpayers have paid $12.2B in damages, and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) estimates another $38.6B to $44.3B still owed.^11,12 Yet that fuel retains roughly 90% of its potential energy,¹³ and the DOE estimates recycling could recover most of it, while the molten salt refining process could cut the waste requiring long-term disposal by 90%.¹⁴

The waste problem is compounded by a fuel supply problem. U.S. electricity demand is projected to grow 21% by 2030 and 39% by 2035, driven above all by data centers, and buyers are turning to nuclear, the rare source that is clean and firm at scale.^15,16,17 Google and Constellation recently announced a 20-year agreement to bring 890 MW of new nuclear capacity onto the PJM grid,¹⁸ while the White House targets quadrupling U.S. nuclear capacity to 400 GW by 2050.¹⁹ Yet the U.S. buys most of its enrichment abroad. Russia supplied 26% of the enrichment services^f for U.S. reactors in 2025,²⁰ and the law banning those imports takes full effect on January 1, 2028.²¹

The squeeze is most pronounced in HALEU. INL projects demand of more than 50 metric tons per year by 2035 and more than 500 by 2050,²² while Centrus, the first U.S. HALEU producer, has produced roughly 1.9 metric tons and targets 12 metric tons of annual capacity by 2029.²³ Producing HALEU from used fuel sidesteps that bottleneck because the government holds a separate inventory of used fuel that began as highly enriched uranium well above HALEU levels and remains above HALEU’s 20% enrichment upper limit even after irradiation^g. Consequently, the hardest step, enrichment itself, is already done and recovery requires only chemical separation and down-blending. The DOE is proving that approach at INL, recovering roughly 10 metric tons of HALEU, about 5x more than U.S. commercial enrichment has produced to date, work Project Omega’s ARPA-E program builds on directly.^23,24 This makes the process simpler and cheaper to scale, positioning Project Omega’s modular platform to become a leading near-term HALEU provider, without multi-billion-dollar centrifuge infrastructure, while traditional enrichers face multiyear lead times.

Policy has kept pace. The May 2025 executive orders directed the first national policy for used fuel recycling in decades,²⁵ and in February 2026 the DOE awarded $19M to advance used fuel recycling technologies.¹⁴ For the first time since the 1970s, the policy window for a domestic recycling industry is open.

 

Closing the Loop on American Nuclear
Nuclear is entering a new era, but the opportunity is bigger than building more reactors: the U.S. also needs the fuel-cycle infrastructure, from the front end (fuel) to the back end (waste), to support that growth. The next decade will be determined as much by fuel as by reactors, and dozens of developers competing on reactor design all draw on a domestic fuel supply chain that the U.S. is only beginning to rebuild. Project Omega has the potential to become a critical part of that infrastructure.

By transforming used nuclear fuel into reactor fuel and valuable radioisotopes, Project Omega is positioned to benefit from the growth of the broader nuclear industry while creating a complementary opportunity in long-duration power systems. The radioisotope stream from the same refinery is upside potential for a second generational business opportunity serving defense, intelligence and space. The company is in a unique picks-and-shovels position in the nuclear economy with exposure to the upside of the entire nuclear buildout regardless of which reactor designs ultimately win, plus an independent, uncorrelated growth vector in defense and space.

We believe the convergence of renewed nuclear investment, growing electricity demand and national security priorities makes this a pivotal moment for Project Omega. Oil helped power the last century of innovation, and nuclear materials and isotopes have the potential to help power the next. We are proud to partner with Staff and the Project Omega team as they build the refineries to unlock that potential.

The investment was led by Howard Morgan (B Capital Co-Founder, Chair and General Partner, Ascent Fund), Jeff Johnson (General Partner, Head of Energy at B Capital) and Gabe Greenbaum (General Partner, Ascent Fund), alongside Karly Wentz (Partner, Energy) and Patrick Harmon (Sr. Principal, Ascent Fund) with investment team members Nate Johnson and Eric Brook.

 

 

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LEGAL DISCLAIMER
All information is as of November 2, 2026 and subject to change. The investment discussed herein is a portfolio company of B Capital; however, such investment does not represent all B Capital investments. Certain statements reflected herein reflect the subjective opinions and views of B Capital personnel. Such statements cannot be independently verified and are subject to change. Reference to third-party firms or businesses does not imply affiliation with or endorsement by such firms or businesses. It should not be assumed that any investments or companies identified and discussed herein were or will be profitable. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The information herein does not constitute or form part of an offer to issue or sell, or a solicitation of an offer to subscribe or buy, any securities or other financial instruments, nor does it constitute a financial promotion, investment advice or an inducement or incitement to participate in any product, offering or investment. Much of the relevant information is derived directly from various sources which B Capital believes to be reliable, but without independent verification. This information is provided for reference only and the companies described herein may not be representative of all relevant companies or B Capital investments. You should not rely upon this information to form the definitive basis for any decision, contract, commitment or action. Any forward-looking statements are based solely on information provided by the company or on publicly available data and reflect the views of the authors as of the date of publication.

SOURCES

1. American Nuclear Society, Nuclear Newswire, “Project Omega and INL to further investigate UNF recycling with ARPA-E award,” April 8, 2026
2. NASA Science, “Radioisotope Power Systems”
3. Tectonic Defense, “Project Omega’s Plan to Turn Nuke Waste Into a Next-Gen Power Source for the Pentagon,” February 12, 2026
4. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Americium in Ionization Smoke Detectors”
5. Project Omega via Business Wire, “Project Omega Emerges From Stealth to Recycle America’s Spent Nuclear Fuel,” February 11, 2026
6. Project Omega via Business Wire, “Project Omega and Idaho National Lab Announce ARPA-E Award to Advance Used Nuclear Fuel Recycling,” April 2, 2026
7. Morgan State University via Business Wire, “$3.37M DARPA ‘Rads to Watts’ Contract Awarded to Morgan State University and a Multi-Organizational Team to Deliver Next-Generation Nuclear Micro-Power Systems for Extreme Environments,” June 15, 2026
8. Forbes, “This Startup Wants To Turn America’s Nuclear Waste Into Power,” February 11, 2026
9. E&E News by POLITICO, “Startup plans to develop long-lasting nuclear batteries,” February 11, 2026
10. U.S. Government Accountability Office, “Nuclear Waste Disposal” (High-Risk List)
11. U.S. Government Accountability Office, “Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel: Congressional Action Needed to Break Impasse and Develop a Permanent Disposal Solution” (GAO-21-603), September 2021
12. U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Inspector General, “The Department of Energy Nuclear Waste Fund’s Fiscal Year 2025 Financial Statement Audit” (DOE-OIG-26-03), 2025
13. U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy, “5 Fast Facts About Spent Nuclear Fuel,” October 2022
14. U.S. Department of Energy, “DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy Awards $19 Million to Advance Recycling of Used Nuclear Fuel,” February 5, 2026
15. U.S. Energy Information Administration, “After more than a decade of little change, U.S. electricity consumption is rising again,” Today in Energy, May 13, 2025
16. ICF, “New ICF Report Finds U.S. Has Just 3% Excess Generating Capacity as Electricity Demand Accelerates,” June 2026
17. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, “United States Data Center Energy Usage Report: 2025 Update,” 2026
18. Constellation Energy, “Google and Constellation Announce Landmark Agreement to Bring 890 MW of New Nuclear Capacity to PJM Grid as Part of Long-Term Power Deal,” October 6, 2026
19. U.S. Department of Energy, “9 Key Takeaways from President Trump’s Executive Orders on Nuclear Energy,” May 2025
20. U.S. Energy Information Administration, “2025 Uranium Marketing Annual Report,” August 2026
21. Public Law 118-62, “Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act,” May 13, 2024
22. Idaho National Laboratory, “Estimated HALEU Requirements for Advanced Reactors to Support a Net-Zero Emissions Economy by 2050” (INL/EXT-21-64913), 2021
23. American Nuclear Society, Nuclear Newswire, “DOE contract boosts Centrus’s HALEU goals as Urenco continues LEU expansion,” July 6, 2026
24. U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy, “Spent Nuclear Fuel from this Retired Government Reactor is Getting a Second Life,” August 31, 2023
25. The White House, “Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base,” Executive Order, May 23, 2025

DEFINITIONS

1. Used nuclear fuel: Fuel that has been used in a nuclear reactor and removed once it can no longer efficiently sustain a chain reaction; it still contains the large majority of its original energy content.
2. High-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU): Uranium enriched to between 5% and 20% uranium-235, the fuel most advanced reactor designs require; today’s operating fleet runs on uranium enriched below 5%.
3. Molten salt electrochemical processing: A recycling method that dissolves used fuel in high-temperature molten salt and uses electric current to separate its components, in contrast to the water-based chemical methods used in legacy reprocessing plants.
4. Proliferation risk: The risk that materials or technology from a civilian nuclear program could be diverted to build nuclear weapons; separated plutonium is the central concern in fuel reprocessing.
5. Radioisotope power system (RPS): A power source that converts the energy released by decaying radioactive isotopes into electricity, providing continuous power for years to decades without refueling or maintenance.
6. Enrichment / enrichment services: The industrial process of increasing the concentration of the fissile isotope uranium-235 in uranium fuel. Enrichment services refer to purchases of that processing step, which utilities buy separately from the uranium itself; a country can supply little of America’s uranium yet still perform much of its enrichment.
7. Irradiation: The exposure of nuclear fuel to neutron radiation inside an operating reactor as it generates power; irradiated fuel is fuel that has been used in a reactor.