Small Town Plays Guinea Pig For First-Of-Its-Kind Underground Nuclear Reactor

Residents in a small Kansas town are divided over a new underground nuclear plant scheduled for installation by mid 2027.

Parsons, Kansas, a 10-square-mile railroad town established in 1871, is home to 9,600 residents. The farming town is divided over the underground nuclear plant created by a company called Deep Fission. Some believe it will revitalize their sleepy town, creating jobs and the promise of a data center and manufacturers; others are concerned about the environmental impacts an underground nuclear reactor poses, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

If the plant is built, it would become the first borehole underground commercial reactor using a common pressurized water reactor design. Deep Fission was founded three years ago by professor emeritus of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, Richard Muller, and his daughter, Liz Muller. 

With the help of an inventor, Deep Fission designed the Gravity Reactor, a small modular reactor (SMR), which is an advanced nuclear fission plant noted for its small compact size and power capacity of up to 15 megawatts of electricity per unit. The SMR lies in a mile deep borehole and is designed to use “readily available low-enriched uranium (LEU) fuel,” according to Deep Fission. 

Unlike traditional nuclear power plants, the Gravity Reactor is geologically isolated with the depth of the borehole providing the “operational pressures” and enhanced safety that should protect the public, according to the company. 

Despite these assurances, not all Parsons residents are convinced. Some residents were shocked that the Great Plains Industrial Park, a decommissioned U.S. Army ammunition plant, approved the nuclear plant without public discussion.

“I put $125,000 into my house, and now a nuclear reactor is coming to town,” Jerel Johnson, an IT professional who planned to retire in Parsons, said. “I can’t think of a worse idea.”

Marjorie Reynolds, a pediatric nurse who is concerned about environmental oversight and “potential risks to water,” created a non-profit organization called the Prairie Dog Alliance. She questions how drillers perform under oil-and-gas regulations instead of nuclear ones.

“We don’t know how the oil and gas industry rules and regulations apply specifically to an experimental nuclear project that includes a borehole,” Reynolds said, per KCUR News. “So that’s one of our great concerns.” 

“Any time you’re putting a nuclear reactor in a hole, it’s kind of scary,” Verlyn Bolinger, an insurance agent sitting on the city’s commission, said. “It’s great that it’s here. It’s kind of bad that we’re the guinea pigs.”

However, other residents are excited about the potential economic boom the nuclear reactor can bring. With elected officials finding the addition of a Taco Bell or the saving of a furniture store a financial win, Deep Fission’s project could encourage people to move to the small town.

“Rural communities cannot build their futures by rejecting new technology before it’s evaluated,” Wayne Gilmore, an optometrist and owner of the local radio station that broadcasts the high-school football games, said.

The Parsons police chief, Robert Spinks, believes this could be just what the city needs to experience growth.

“It’s a proven technology, just in a new application,” Spinks said. “And if that is a trigger which draws in other manufacturing and brings in living-wage jobs, I think that’s a win.”

Liz Muller, the CEO of Deep Fission, released a statement, asserting that “transparency and working closely with the Parsons community has always been a top priority for us.” The company also hired someone to live in the Parsons community to create a “local presence.”

The company raised roughly $150 million in the past year, and broke ground last December in Parsons, Kansas, on 100 acres in what is “a mostly overgrown industrial park dotted with old munitions bunkers just outside town,” according to the Journal.

Currently, Deep Fission has dug a test hole and is planning to drill a second hole this year, sending a prototype reactor down. Finally, the company will place a steel canister containing nuclear fuel in a third hole to heat water and generate electricity by 2027 or 2028 — remarkably fast for the industry. 

Deep Fission’s potential investment in Parsons, Kansas, comes as the Trump administration seeks a “nuclear renaissance” as electricity demands rise and AI data centers experience explosive growth. The administration hopes to quadruple America’s nuclear-power generation by 2050, per The Wall Street Journal.

Twelve Democratic attorneys general accused the Trump administration of moving too quickly and cutting corners. They argue that the Department of Energy has adopted a “categorical exclusion” that exempts developing advanced nuclear reactors from “environmental review.”