How to Build a Better Kind of Nuclear Power? This Side Hustle Might Help.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.

Supported by

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

How to Build a Better Kind of Nuclear Power? This Side Hustle Might Help.

Zap Energy says its ultimate goal is safe, clean energy from fusion. To help get there, it’s starting to build fission reactors.

Listen

· 6:31 min

Share full article

Benj Conway, Zap’s president and co-founder.

Credit...

Grant Hindsley for The New York Times

By

Raymond Zhong

April 29, 2026

Updated

9:30 a.m. ET

See more of our coverage in your search results.

Encuentra más de nuestra cobertura en los resultados de búsqueda.

Add The New York Times on Google

Agrega The New York Times en Google

Atomic fusion has long been seen as the ultimate source of clean energy because of all its advantages over fission, the process that has powered nuclear power plants for nearly eight decades.

It’s safer — no chain reactions, no meltdowns. It would leave no long-lasting radioactive waste. And it would use fuels that are cheaper and more abundant, providing an attractive source of round-the-clock, emissions-free energy that could help stop climate change.

Now, one leading fusion start-up has decided the best way to beat fission might be to embrace it.

Zap Energy, a nine-year-old company in Everett, Wash., said on Wednesday that it had begun developing a small fission reactor, one that would be cheaper and less complex to build than existing nuclear reactors.

Zap isn’t moving away from fusion, Benj Conway, the company’s president and co-founder, said in an interview. Fission and fusion are opposite processes; the former splits atoms while the latter melds them. Even so, there are commonalities in engineering that give Zap and its particular design for a fusion reactor a head start in fission, Mr. Conway said.

Plus, developing fission reactors will give the company experience in obtaining regulatory approvals and building to commercial safety standards, he said. That experience will be important when the company starts building fusion plants.

By pursuing fission, “we’ll be building fusion power plants much, much earlier than we would be doing otherwise,” Mr. Conway said. Zap hopes to bring its fission reactor to market in the early 2030s.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and

log into

your Times account, or

subscribe

for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?

Log in

.

Want all of The Times?

Subscribe

.

Related Content

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT