Former SpaceX engineers revive shelved nuclear reactor design to power AI data centers

A nuclear reactor design that burned through roughly $400 million in investment before being quietly shelved in 2017 is getting a second life, courtesy of two engineers who used to build rockets for Elon Musk. Ben Kellie and Paul Keutelian, both former SpaceX engineers, founded Applied Atomics in 2025 with a specific goal: take a proven but abandoned reactor concept and route its output directly to the data centers that AI companies are desperately trying to keep powered. On June 17, 2026, the company signed a licensing agreement with BWXT, giving Applied Atomics exclusive commercial rights to the mPower small modular reactor design across the US and Canada. What exactly they’re reviving The mPower reactor is a Generation III+ light-water small modular reactor rated at 195 megawatts electric, or 575 megawatts thermal. For context, a single large conventional nuclear plant typically generates around 1,000 MW electric, so mPower sits in a middle tier: smaller and faster to build than traditional nuclear, but meaningfully more powerful than the micro-reactors that often dominate SMR headlines. BWXT originally developed mPower with partner Babcock and Wilcox, drawing significant federa...