Subcritical's Reactor Design Makes Runaway Nuclear Reactions Impossible
Fred Turner · We Built Our Own Salesforce in Months. Here's Why We're Cancelling the $600K Contract | Curative CEO · Jul 18, 2026 · at 1:17:44
Fred Turner, co-founder of nuclear startup Subcritical, explains how pairing a particle accelerator with a subcritical nuclear reactor design prevents runaway fission reactions.
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“So we are designed to operate at .97. So that means you never have enough neutrons to keep the reaction going. The reaction will always fizzle out. So no matter what you do, it's going to fizzle out. But normally that would mean you get no power output. What you do in the energy amplifier is you point a really powerful particle accelerator at that fuel, and that puts in the extra neutrons to drive the reaction forward. But if you turn that accelerator off, all of your energy output just stops. And so you basically have this big on-off switch where you can control fission. And you can guarantee that no matter what you do to it, the fission will never run away.”
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