• Nuclear Pulse — November 15, 2026
  • The Brief
  • Geopolitical & Strategic Analysis
  • Regional Developments
    • North America
    • Europe
    • Asia
    • Middle East & Africa
  • Technology & Innovation
  • Fusion Research
  • Market & Economic Intelligence
  • Sources

§Nuclear Pulse — November 15, 2026

Covering: November 8–15, 2026 | Published: November 15, 2026

§The Brief

The US regulator issued its first construction permit for a commercial advanced reactor at an industrial site, four Xe-100 units at Dow’s Texas plant.

The IAEA told member states it cannot locate Iran’s fourth enrichment plant, and cannot verify the 441 kilograms of 60 percent uranium it last counted.

Germany moved to buy RWE and E.ON’s third of Urenco for up to €4 billion, putting enrichment capacity in state hands for deterrence.

Spot uranium closed at $90.55 a pound, down 1.3 percent, while TradeTech’s long-term indicator set a record $99.

Watch whether Dow’s board turns its permit into steel, and what Tehran answers on inspections.

§Geopolitical & Strategic Analysis

Access, not capacity, was the week’s strategic currency, and the two states that own enrichment moved in opposite directions.

The IAEA’s report to member states, circulated on Friday, says the agency does not know the precise location of the Isfahan Fuel Enrichment Plant (1). Iran declared the plant on 12 June 2025, a day before Israeli strikes began, and the design verification scheduled for the next day never happened (1). The agency cannot say whether the site holds nuclear material, and says Iran has not accepted repeated requests for access (2).

Iran’s answer is procedural and blunt. It told the agency that inspections cannot resume in the current security situation (2). The report calls the missing information „a matter of serious proliferation concern” that must be rectified with the utmost urgency (1). What the agency can no longer measure is a stockpile it last assessed at 440.9 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent (3).

The material is a separate argument from the sites. Iran’s security chief, Mohsen Rezaei, said Tehran will not let a single particle of enriched material leave the country, including under a Russian offer to take custody (4). He said the material is needed to design nuclear-powered ships and submarines, and that Moscow had been told it stays (4).

Europe answered on the supply side instead. Berlin is preparing to buy the one-third of Urenco held by RWE and E.ON, with up to €4 billion set aside in the 2027 budget (5). London asked Berlin to take the stake rather than let it reach another buyer, because Urenco is central to modernising Britain’s deterrent (5). The company still enriches at Gronau in western Germany, three years after the country’s last reactor left the grid (5).

At COP31 in Antalya, the industry asked for a line it did not get. The presidency’s 35-by-35 pledge to lift electricity to 35 percent of final energy demand by 2035 does not name nuclear (6). Sama Bilbao y León of the World Nuclear Association said the argument has moved from whether to triple capacity to how fast it can be delivered (6). Thirty-nine countries have signed the tripling declaration, six of them since COP30 (6).

§Regional Developments

Four regions produced decisions this week, and the ones that will be judged hardest were about who pays for a first-of-a-kind build.

§North America

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a construction permit for the Long Mott Generating Station, four Xe-100 reactors totalling 320 MWe at Dow’s Seadrift site in Texas (7). The permit authorises construction only, so an operating licence and a Dow board decision still stand between the design and concrete (7). Dow expects to weigh a preliminary investment decision in 2027, which makes the permit an option rather than a commitment (7).

New York’s power authority qualified ten developers for at least a gigawatt of new nuclear upstate, six of them for large reactors or SMRs and four for SMRs alone (8). It drew 21 responses to a May request and will now solicit site-specific proposals, with no announcement promised until a project is chosen (8).

Ontario supplied the week’s counterweight. Ontario Power Generation said the first Darlington SMR will miss its October 2030 target and its C$7.7 billion budget, citing first-of-a-kind engineering and supply-chain performance (9).

§Europe

Ankara put a date on a milestone it has promised for years. The energy minister said physical start-up at Akkuyu 1 will begin within weeks, meaning fuel loading and the first self-sustaining chain reaction (10). The unit’s containment passed strength and leak tests at 0.46 MPa a day earlier, clearing the way for cold and hot functional testing (11). Türkiye also commissioned an AtkinsRéalis study for a six-unit Candu station, with a feasibility report due in May (12).

Slovakia’s Mochovce 4 reached 35 percent power on its staged path to a 144-hour trial run at full output (13). The 471 MWe unit was connected in October and has produced about 16.2 GWh so far (13).

§Asia

Taiwan’s nuclear referendum entered its televised phase ahead of the 28 November vote, which asks whether to abolish the „nuclear-free homeland” policy (14). The island has generated no nuclear electricity since Maanshan 2 shut in May 2025, and the government says restarts need safety reviews whatever the result (14).

Kazakhstan set out the shape of its fuel strategy: deposits kept in the ground, processed uranium set aside and fuel assemblies stored at each plant, sized to supply its reactors for a century (15). Astana targets a 2027 construction start at Balkhash and is now scouting sites for a third station (15).

§Middle East & Africa

Morocco is negotiating to become France’s next uranium supplier. State phosphate group OCP is in talks with EDF and Orano about recovering yellowcake from phosphoric acid at Jorf Lasfar, with production from 2028 (16). A memorandum could be signed during King Mohammed VI’s state visit to Paris, which the Élysée wants in January (16).

§Technology & Innovation

The week’s technology news was mostly about the equipment and licences that make a second unit possible.

Oklo’s Groves-1 test reactor near Lockhart, Texas cleared its final operations hold point and can now run for research, testing and training (17). It reached criticality in August, less than a year after groundbreaking, under a Department of Energy authorisation pathway rather than an NRC licence (17).

Fuel is the next constraint being closed. Oklo signed definitive HALEU purchase agreements with Centrus, with deliveries from its Ohio plant beginning in 2029 and prepayments funding new enrichment capacity (18). Meta’s prepayment for power underpins the first phase of a 1.2 GW Ohio campus, which will hold several Aurora powerhouses (18).

BWXT finished a 55,000 square foot expansion at its Cambridge works, enlarging the largest commercial nuclear clean room in the world by 40 percent (19). The added capacity serves 48 new steam generators for Pickering and the pressure vessel for Darlington’s BWRX-300 (19).

In China, the first of two steam generators went into Lufeng 1 on 11 November, a 630 tonne component for a 1,250 MWe CAP1000 (20). FluxPoint Energy closed a seed round to advance what it expects will be the first new US uranium conversion plant in almost 70 years, targeting output in 2030-2031 (21).

§Fusion Research

Fusion’s numbers arrived this week in the form investors read them: committed capital, plant counts and the gap between the two.

The IAEA’s fourth World Fusion Outlook puts private fusion funding at a record $4.5 billion in the twelve months to July, taking cumulative commitments to about $22 billion (22). Its FusionX contribution estimates that a further $80 billion of private capital is needed over twenty years to reach commercialisation (22).

The report counts 26 fusion power plants in planning, with first-electricity targets spread from the early 2030s to the 2050s (23). It records 174 fusion facilities worldwide, of which 13 of 63 private ones are operating against 85 of 111 public ones (23).

Canada put public money behind the people side: AECL and Canadian Nuclear Laboratories endowed a $2.5 million fusion research chair at the University of Toronto, matched by Ontario Power Generation and the university (24).

§Market & Economic Intelligence

Spot drifted lower while the contract market set another record, and the exchanges began building products for the second market.

Spot uranium was $90.55 a pound on Sunday, down 1.3 percent from $91.76 a week earlier (25).

Cameco’s public price page carries the October assessment at $91.55 spot against a record $98.00 long-term, a premium of $6.45 (26). TradeTech’s own long-term indicator reached $99 at the end of October, up 2.1 percent on the month and the highest since its series began in 1996 (27).

CME Group is close to finalising storage with ConverDyn for a physically backed uranium futures contract, with Solstice managing inventories at Metropolis Works in Illinois (28). The documents were under final legal review, with the arrangement expected by year-end (28).

Producers are raising against that market. Paladin completed an A$525 million raising at A$7.80 a share, an 11 percent discount to its last close, to fund early works at Patterson Lake South toward first production in 2031 (29). Kazakhstan’s plan to keep a century of uranium in the ground is the same judgement from the other side of the trade (15).

§Sources

1. BBC News, „UN watchdog ‘increasingly concerned’ over Iran nuclear site” (November 13, 2026)
2. Al Jazeera, „UN watchdog calls on Iran to reopen nuclear facilities to inspection” (November 13, 2026)
3. CBC News, „UN nuclear watchdog increasingly concerned about Iranian enrichment plant, report says” (November 13, 2026)
4. Reuters, „Iran will not allow enriched nuclear material to leave the country, security chief says” (November 11, 2026)
5. OilPrice.com, „Germany Eyes 4 Billion Buyout of RWE and E.ON’s Urenco Stake” (November 13, 2026)
6. World Nuclear News, „Industry urges nuclear recognition in COP31’s 35-by-35 pledge” (November 13, 2026)
7. World Nuclear News, „US issues landmark construction permit for Texas SMR plant” (November 10, 2026)
8. American Public Power Association, „New York Power Authority Announces Significant Step in Effort to Deliver at Least 1 GW of Advanced Nuclear Energy” (November 13, 2026)
9. World Nuclear News, „OPG set to revise timeline and cost of first SMR unit” (November 11, 2026)
10. Hürriyet Daily News, „Türkiye targets initial Akkuyu reactor startup within weeks” (November 14, 2026)
11. World Nuclear News, „Strength and leak tests completed for Akkuyu 1 containment” (November 13, 2026)
12. World Nuclear News, „AtkinsRéalis producing study for six-unit Candu plant in Turkey” (November 12, 2026)
13. World Nuclear News, „Mochovce 4’s power increased to 35%” (November 12, 2026)
14. Focus Taiwan, „Taiwan lawmakers clash over nuclear power referendum” (November 12, 2026)
15. The Astana Times, „Kazakhstan Advances Nuclear Power Plans, Considers Sites for Third Facility” (November 14, 2026)
16. Le Monde, „Morocco positions itself as potential uranium supplier to France” (November 13, 2026)
17. World Nuclear News, „US test reactor cleared for operations” (November 12, 2026)
18. World Nuclear News, „Centrus, Oklo deal secures fuel for Ohio reactor deployment” (November 13, 2026)
19. World Nuclear News, „BWXT manufacturing facility expansion complete” (November 13, 2026)
20. World Nuclear News, „First steam generator installed at Lufeng unit 1” (November 12, 2026)
21. PR Newswire, „FluxPoint Energy Closes Seed Funding Round to Advance U.S. Uranium Conversion Facility” (November 10, 2026)
22. IAEA, „World Fusion Outlook 2026: AI, the US $80 Billion Financing Challenge and Future Deployment Scenarios” (November 12, 2026)
23. American Nuclear Society, „IAEA publishes 2026 World Fusion Outlook” (November 13, 2026)
24. GlobeNewswire, „AECL & CNL Announce Funding Endowment to Establish Research Chair for Centre for Fusion Energy” (November 13, 2026)
25. Tindex, „Uranium price today, 15 November 2026: live chart & history” (November 15, 2026)
26. Cameco, „Uranium Price” (accessed November 15, 2026)
27. Vietnam.vn, „Uranium prices hit record highs as demand for nuclear power surges” (November 15, 2026)
28. Bloomberg via Energy Connects, „Nuclear Revival Spurs CME to Move Ahead on Physical Uranium Contracts” (November 11, 2026)
29. The Northern Miner, „Paladin seeks A$525M for Saskatchewan uranium” (November 12, 2026)