Deep Atomic Data Center, Idaho Falls, Idaho

Deep Atomic, a small nuclear reactor developer, has asked the US Department of Energy for a long-term lease at Idaho National Laboratory to build a data center campus that would eventually run on its own 60 megawatt reactor, the MK60. The laboratory sits near Idaho Falls, in Bonneville County, Idaho, though the reactor test site itself is a 900 square mile stretch of remote desert, about the size of Rhode Island. Deep Atomic's consortium submitted the proposal to the Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy in early December 2025, and the department has not yet announced a decision on it.

The plan is to open the data center first, within 24 to 36 months, running on grid, geothermal and solar power, while the MK60 reactor goes through the licensing steps needed before it can operate. Deep Atomic told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on March 20, 2025 that it was starting that process, and said it aimed to file the required paperwork by the end of 2027. Clayco joined the consortium in February 2026 to help plan construction, and its chairman Bob Clark said the goal was "a buildable, delivery-ready proposal for this groundbreaking, first-of-kind project." Shane Todd of Parker Tide, a member of the consortium, called the lab "the perfect home for this historic first."

Near the laboratory, residents of Atomic City, the closest town, say they are not worried about new test reactors running there this summer: "I live 10 miles away, and I'm fine," said Vickie O'Haro, who runs the town's bar. Edwin Lyman, nuclear power safety director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, was less reassured, saying "I have no confidence in the Department of Energy and its oversight of this at all." Those test reactors are separate from Deep Atomic's plan; they are part of a Department of Energy pilot program that required four companies to reach criticality, a self-sustaining chain reaction, by July 4, 2026.

One of those companies, Aalo Atomics, hit that deadline at the laboratory and is now working with Crusoe to install one of Crusoe's small prefabricated data centers there in 2027, powered by an Aalo reactor, a plan further along than Deep Atomic's. The Department of Energy opened this kind of bidding on September 8, 2025, offering companies long-term leases on about 44,000 acres of laboratory land if they pay to build, run and eventually dismantle their own projects and secure their own power connections. No date has been set for a decision on Deep Atomic's proposal.