An American company will soon embark on a full-scale test to drill a borehole to store canisters of rad waste deep underground.

The nuclear waste disposal startup Deep Isolation has struck a deal with Navarro Research and Engineering, a major federal contractor, to license its technology for storing radioactive material in deep bore holes, Latitude Media has learned.

A tiny uranium pellet the size of a gummy bear holds energy matching 140 oil barrels. It’s humanity’s most environmentally friendly, secure power resource. So what’s preventing universal nuclear implementation? We smothered brilliance with bureaucracy. But now, regulation is finally becoming a solved problem.

The new generation of US nuclear reactors faces a familiar question: What happens to the nuclear waste? Deep Isolation is a Berkeley, CA-based company developing a borehole-based long-term storage solution for spent nuclear fuel and radioactive material. Last week, it announced a $33M round of funding from private investors. 

Deep Isolation announced Thursday it is moving to become a public company and merge with Aspen-1 Acquisition. The Berkeley, Calif. based nuclear disposal technology company has closed a reverse merger transaction with the U.S.-based blank check company Aspen-1 Acquisition, according to Deep Isolation’s Thursday press release.

Berkeley-based Deep Isolation Nuclear Inc. raised $33 million through a private placement to further its nuclear waste storage technology. Before the new funding, the company had raised $26.1 million over six rounds. The company is developing a system that utilizes oil and gas fracking techniques to store spent nuclear fuel deep underground, and the funding will support testing of a full-scale version of its borehole storage system. The planned full-scale test is set for early 2027 and will use canisters designed to hold spent fuel rods. Deep Isolation also announced a merger with U.S.-based blank check company Aspen-1 Acquisition Inc., facilitating its transition to a publicly traded entity in the coming months.

With a new generation of reactor technologies on the cusp of commercial deployment a new regulatory-ready, globally deployable canister solution is essential to keep pace. 

The U.S. nuclear industry is gearing up for a major shift in how it handles radioactive waste, introducing a new strategy aimed at finally breaking decades of policy and regulatory stalemate. The U.S. Nuclear Industry Council (USNIC) has rolled out an Action Plan designed to modernize the sector’s approach and align with broader federal goals to rejuvenate America’s nuclear energy capabilities.

The U.S. nuclear industry carries over $40 billion in stranded liabilities from spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level waste (HLW), locked in temporary storage due to the failure of conventional disposal solutions like the Yucca Mountain repository. For decades, this unresolved problem has hindered nuclear energy’s growth, even as advanced reactors promise to decarbonize industries and stabilize energy grids. Enter Deep Isolation, a startup whose deep borehole disposal (DBD) technology is now positioned to transform the sector’s back-end logistics—and its investment potential.

California-based Deep Isolation has praised the U.S. Nuclear Industry Council for its plan to address nuclear waste disposal policy in the United States, including establishment of an independent body outside the Department of Energy.