Jamie Kloncz is the founder of RankShield Energy, where he leads the HELIX microreactor pre-application program and the company's verification-first approach to advanced-reactor operations.
RankShield Energy is a pre-applicant with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Its work centers on a question the advanced-reactor field has not yet answered for buyers: as reactors move toward autonomous and remotely operated designs, how does an independent party confirm, and prove to a regulator, insurer, lender, or grid operator, that a reactor is doing what its operator says it is. The HELIX reactor is the reference design for that verification-first approach and remains a pre-application design study.
Jamie writes the RankShield Energy resource guides on microreactor verification, autonomy and NRC Part 57, cybersecurity, and the licensing process. Every guide is written to authoritative sources, the NRC, the Department of Energy, the IAEA, and the national laboratories, and states plainly where the company's own design is a target rather than a proven result.
A note on authorship and status
Articles bylined here reflect RankShield Energy's own perspective as a pre-applicant. Nothing on this site is a representation that any RankShield Energy design is NRC-approved, licensed, or certified. Reactor descriptions reflect design intent and are subject to analysis, testing, and regulatory review.
RankShield Energy · HELIX · pre-application
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We are developing HELIX, our own sealed, transportable microreactor, targeting the NRC's proposed 10 CFR Part 57 microreactor framework with Part 53 as the backup pathway, with a qualified third-party fabricator manufacturing to our specification. What makes us different is not the reactor. It is that ours can be independently verified. Every module signs its telemetry and is attested from the factory floor to every operating hour.
Is this an operating reactor, or a study?
It is pre-application development, not an operating product. No microreactor of this class has been built or run at its rated life yet, including ours. Every figure we publish is a design target and every physics result is unqualified screening, pre-QAPD. We label all of it honestly. That discipline is what makes the rest credible.
Why should a regulator or partner take a pre-application program seriously?
Because pre-application is exactly where the credible advanced-reactor cohort is. Part 53 only became final in 2026, the microreactor-specific Part 57 is still a proposed rule, and the leading microreactor developers are all in pre-application or early licensing. We treat the honest labels as milestones on a defined path we are actively executing, not as caveats.
How does HELIX make power without water?
Heat leaves the core through sealed sodium heat pipes, no pumps of any kind and no water anywhere in the primary. A dry supercritical-CO2 Brayton cycle on skids outside the sealed module converts it to electricity, targeting roughly 40 percent net. All heat is rejected to dry coolers, so there is no cooling tower and no water draw against the community that hosts the plant.
What fuel does it use, and can you actually buy it?
UCO-TRISO at 19.75 percent HALEU in a graphite core. It is the only advanced fuel form that is both NRC-precedented and purchasable from multiple US fabricators today. Our screening also shows the core reaches its reactivity limit with most of its uranium unburned, over 90 percent of the U-235 remains, so factory recharge re-banks that reactivity rather than discarding a nearly full fuel load.
How big is a site and how often do you swap the core?
A site numbers up identical sealed modules of roughly 5 megawatts each, one for a hotel or campus, twenty-plus for a hyperscale site. Staggered sealed-core swaps land on a roughly 5 to 7 year cadence and an N+1 reserve module carries an outage, so the modules are multi-year but the site runs indefinitely on rolling factory recharge. Our depletion screening puts module life at roughly four to five full-power years as modeled, likely five to seven once known model conservatisms are removed.
What happens in a total loss of power and cooling?
Nothing that matters. Reactivity self-limits on a strongly negative temperature coefficient, the control drums insert fail-safe by spring and gravity with no power needed, and decay heat leaves by natural-draft air cooling and radiation alone. A total loss of power and cooling is an availability event, not a safety event. There are no pumps anywhere in the reactor, so there is no loss-of-flow accident class, and the safety case never credits a pump, a valve, an operator, or a network.
Can the verification network ever interfere with safety?
No, by construction of the wiring. The attestation layer is classified non-safety and observe-only. It sits behind a hardware one-way path, so it can prove a module is intact but it physically cannot send a command toward a safety system. The safety systems are local and passive and unreachable from any network.
What does "verifiable" actually mean here?
Each module signs its sensor readings and firmware with post-quantum cryptography and anchors them to an append-only log co-signed by independent off-site witnesses. An operator, an insurer, or a regulator can check a module directly rather than take our word for it. Anyone can write the word secure. Only a verifiable reactor lets you check.
How does a fleet catch a problem before it becomes one?
Each site normalizes its performance against its own environment, then the RankShield Network compares every reactor to what its conditions predict. A reactor that drifts from that expectation stands out against an independent-witness fleet. The elegant part is that the same signal flags both wear and tampering, so one detector serves efficiency and security.
What is the licensing pathway?
Our primary target is 10 CFR Part 57, the NRC's proposed microreactor framework (proposed May 1, 2026; final rule expected November 23, 2026). It provides fleet approvals of identical reactors and is aimed at simple machines with simple safety systems, which the pumpless walk-away design is built to fit. Part 53, final since April 2026, remains the backup pathway and our scoping work against it transfers. We claim no approval, and no application is underway.
What still has to happen before you build hardware?
A stood-up NQA-1 quality program, independent physics validation with independent codes and ultimately test data, an NRC license, under Part 57 once the rule is final or under Part 53 as the backup, and validated demand. All of it is defined and stated on our licensing page. We make no economic, schedule, or performance guarantee, only honest labeled progress.
