Radiant Nuclear is a dynamic company that has designed, built and transported a complete micro reactor that fits onto the back of a truck. That reactor, named the Kaleidos, will soon be fueled, started and tested through five phases that will include 150 hours at full power without operator assistance. In order to run the tests right up to the full design basis conditions, the tests will be conducted in the National Reactor Innovation Center’s DOME facility.
The reactor shipment began on August 13, 2026.
Tori Shivanandan, Radiant’s President and Chief Operating Officer, visited the Atomic Show to tell us more about Radiant, Kaleidos, Doug Bernaur’s master plan for Radiant “Atoms for Prosperity”, R-50 – Radiant’s fifty reactor/year factory – and the career path that brought her to her key leadership role at an innovative reactor manufacturing company.
Tori talked about growing up in rural Pennsylvania, her stint as the captain of the Carnegie Mellon women’s basketball team, the family-run industrial parts supplier that lured her to Southern California, the fork in the road between medical school and Radiant and her subsequent path to her current role.
We discussed the value of transportable micro-reactors, the economics of behind the meter power generation, Radiant’s design for autonomous operation, the benefits of locating in Southern California’s defense and aerospace heartland, the minor obstacle of California’s prohibition against building and operating new nuclear reactors, and about Radiant’s progress in establishing the R-50 factory and its reactor fueling facility in Oak Ridge, TN.
Tori described the important contributions being made by Radiant’s inspired and hard working employees and the way that mission drives them forward. She also emphasized the important role being played by adequate capital and several successful fund raising cycles.
We talked about Kaleidos internal shielding and the way it can enable a reactor that has been operated for its full life cycle at 100% power to be road transportable in just 30 days. We discussed the system’s ability to go from site delivery to supplying loads within 48 hours and the utility that capability provides for disaster recovery as well as forward operating base power supply.
We briefly covered Radiant’s selection as an initial base power supply provider for the Space Force, with its first unit to be delivered to the Buckley, CO Space Force base in 2028.
Radiant has undertaken a true “shoot for the stars” mission of building a distributed U.S. electrical grid one megawatt at a time. It plans to be rolling one Kaleidos reactor per week out of its first factory, and to rapidly add additional factories as that one is refined and orders add up.
Disclosure: Nucleation Capital, the sponsor of the Atomic Show and Atomic Insights, is an equity investor in Radiant Industries, Inc.
