For the past eight years, former SpaceX engineer Ben Kellie has been building a nuclear power company that will use new technology to provide cleaner and safer energy to large, industrial users like petrochemical refineries and artificial intelligence data centers.
Last week, Kellie came to New Orleans in search of the kind of deals and financing needed to grow his Los Angeles-based company, Applied Atomics, at the state’s first Nuclear Strategy and Supply Chain Summit.
Ben Kellie, CEO of Applied Atomics, leads a panel discussion onstage at the Louisiana Nuclear Strategy and Supply Chain summit at the Windsor Court Hotel on Wednesday, April 29, 2026.
Photo provided
Hosted by Louisiana Economic Development, the two-day event at the Windsor Court Hotel more than 200 investors, energy executives, industrial contractors and federal regulators to network, mingle and discuss all aspects of a nuclear energy sector that many experts believe is on the cusp of a new era of explosive growth.
“It was impressive to have such a broad-based coalition of people interested in nuclear power in one room with a common goal,” said Kellie, whose company helped sponsor the event. “I think everybody is trying to figure out where this is going to go and how we build up over time.”
Gov. Jeff Landry wants Louisiana to be at the center of whatever that new nuclear energy sector looks like.
At a global energy conference Landry unveiled his nuclear energy strategy for the state. It seeks to position Louisiana as a hub for nuclear power plant fabrication — building the modular components that will make up the next generation of plants. It also calls for expanding existing plants like Waterford 3 and Riverbend.
At the summit at the Windsor Court, LED began working through the details of what it will take to implement that strategy.
“We have 200 of the most impressive people in the industry upstairs,” LED Secretary Susan Bourgeois said ahead of the summit. “We want feedback and direction from them about what they need. This will lead to the work plan about building Louisiana out as a nuclear leader.”
Looking for a piece of the 'nuclear renaissance'
Attendees at the summit included leaders in energy services and utilities — Bernhard Capital’s principal Jeff Jenkins, Entergy Louisiana CEO Phillip May and Turner Industries CEO Stephen Toups, who that his industrial construction company is expanding its nuclear fabrication business in Louisiana.
Representatives from major corporations, including Dow, Meta and the venture capital arm of Nippon Steel, were there, too.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chair Ho K. Nieh opened the summit with remarks on the Trump administration's priorities, while David LaCerte, a former Louisiana secretary of Veterans Affairs who now sits on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, hosted a “fireside chat.”
They were joined by dozens of investors and executives from companies that want a piece of what Landry in his opening remarks called “the world’s second nuclear renaissance.”
One attendee was scouting for sites to build what his company says will be a $7 billion facility that turns nuclear waste into fuel for nuclear power plants. Another was looking for opportunities for his London-based company, which plans to build small modular nuclear reactors atop offshore platforms.
Kellie is looking for a site in New Orleans for a testing and training center for Applied Atomics. The facility will house a nonnuclear simulator — a scaled-down version of one of the company’s power plants — that will also be used to train future employees.
“SpaceX didn’t reinvent the rocket. They took existing rocket technology and modernized it,” Kellie said of Applied Atomics’ business model. “That is what we are trying to do with nuclear — make it affordable, easier to build using modern software to bring down cost.”
Cleaner, safer?
Ի’s aligns with President Donald Trump’s interests. The Trump administration has invested billions in nuclear energy and pushed to speed up the regulatory approval process for new and expanded nuclear power plants.
The movement long predates both the sitting president and governor. President Barack Obama started paving the way for more nuclear power nearly two decades ago. And President Joe Biden’s 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and 2022 Inflation Reduction Act both set aside billions for new nuclear capacity.
At the state level, former Gov. John Bel Edwards' Louisiana Climate Action Plan in 2022 included nuclear in the recommendations to meet a goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. In 2023, the Louisiana Public Service Commission unanimously approved a directive to study new nuclear plants in the state.
Entergy’s Waterford 3 Nuclear Unit is seen, Wednesday, May 17, 2023, in Killona, La.
STAFF PHOTO BY HILARY SCHEINUK
Driving the interest is demand for power sources that do not emit the greenhouse gasses that cause extreme weather.
Environmentalists note that while nuclear power is cleaner in some respects than natural gas, it is not a truly clean energy source, like wind and solar, and its radioactive waste carries health and safety risks.
Experts say the latest versions of cooling technology used in the kind of mini power plants generating a lot of the buzz at the moment — small modular reactors that can be deployed behind the fence of large individual users or in energy "parks" that serve a group of several plants and refineries — are safer than those used in older plants.
“It’s fundamentally the same technology but smaller machines and in the process of making them smaller they have invested in inherent or passive safety,” said Michael Corradini, professor emeritus in the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Experts also point out that even among the legacy plants, like Waterford 3 and Riverbend, the safety record is good.
“Riverbend and Waterford 3 have been very well-run plants,” Corradini said. “It's important to remember also that even with Three Mile Island (the Pennsylvania nuclear plant that nearly melted down in 1979), nobody was lost or hurt on-site.”
Chernobyl, the high-profile Russian disaster in 1986, was different. “That was a faulty design,” he said.
Bench strength
The bigger challenge for widespread deployment of nuclear power at the moment is the cost. Nuclear power is expensive to build and the handful of projects in recent years have been built have come in late and over budget.
New designs take time to demo and scale up. Companies looking to ramp up are looking for clients and financing. Applied Atomics, which is backed by venture capital, has yet to ink a deal after eight years, which is not unusual in the industry.
“We need companies that need green power,” said Leigh D’Angelo, Applied Atomics chief marketing officer. “We need someone to finance buildout of construction.”
Toups, of Turner Industries, believes Louisiana’s biggest role in the emerging nuclear sector will be in doing the kind of work his company does — fabricating the modular components that are portable, smaller and can be reassembled on-site for individual users.
“There are hundreds of companies like us that are going to make up this nuclear supply chain … building the stuff, the pipes, the modules, the subassemblies that are going to go in all the nuclear reactors,” he said.
Toups said Louisiana’s deep bench strength in industrial construction — seven of the 10 largest industrial construction companies in the U.S., including Turner, are based in the state — make Louisiana well positioned to build nuclear power plants.
“If there is a boiler maker or a pipe maker anywhere in the globe, they came from Louisiana,” he said.