Zeno pursues nuclear battery manufacturing at Vallecitos

Zeno Power announced today that it is restoring hot cell infrastructure at the Vallecitos Nuclear Center to produce radioisotope power systems (RPSs) for use in extreme environments.

"The facility is initially supporting production of strontium-90-fueled nuclear batter[ies] for undersea applications," said Tyler Bernstein, Zeno cofounder and CEO. "Zeno is also scoping options as it seeks to rapidly scale production of nuclear batteries for space domains."

In April, the company announced it had completed the final design review for an americium-241-fueled RPS developed for a NASA project.

According to the company, the Vallecitos facility initially will be used to fulfill contracts with government customers with plans to move toward production at scale in 2028.

Bernstein said Vallecitos is designed to be an end-to-end facility that will enable the full radiological production process. This includes receipt, storage, and processing of the radioactive materials and assembly, testing, and integration of Zeno's products.

"All fabrication and assembly of nuclear batteries take place on-site," he said.

Zeno has already begun nonradiological operations at the site as it decontaminates and refurbishes the hot cells. Bernstein said the company expects to begin radiological operations later this year, pending California Department of Public Health approval.

The space is being leased from NorthStar Group Services, which took ownership of the 1,600-acre center in 2025 for nuclear decontamination, decommissioning, and environmental site restoration, work which had already been started by GE Hitachi.

According to Zeno, the company is partnering with NorthStar to restore the hot cell infrastructure.

History of Vallecitos: The Vallecitos Atomic Electric Power Plant in California was the first privately financed nuclear power plant to provide meaningful amounts of electricity for public use. It housed a boiling water reactor that received power reactor license no. 1 from the Atomic Energy Commission and operated from 1957 to 1963.

Vallecitos was mainly a training and test facility, paving the way for the full-scale Dresden-1 nuclear plant in Illinois and many others that followed.

Space nuclear energy: The American Nuclear Society recently hosted a webinar in its Educator Training series on nuclear energy in space that featured a presentation by Harsh Desai, chief commercialization officer at Zeno Power and chair of the Nuclear Energy Institute's Space Nuclear Taskforce.