The Nuclear Reactors Coming to a Small Town Near You

As a disruptive new nuclear power project embeds itself in Parsons, Kansas, residents are divided on whether it’s worth the potential risk.

Parsons, Kansas, is larger than the “haphazard hamlet” Truman Capote visited to write In Cold Blood, but not by much. With a population of about 9,600, residents largely pass the time hunting, fishing, and watching high school football. (Under head coach Jeff Schibi, the team is reportedly on the up.) The few tourists sucked into city limits are usually on their way to visit Big Brutus, the world’s largest electric shovel, located a half-hour drive away. “It’s small-town charm,” the city’s economic director, Jim Zaleski, said.

The most noteworthy part of Parsons is probably the industrial park next to it. At 14,000 acres, Great Plains Industrial Park dwarfs its home city in both size and economic impact. The area was an Army ammunition plant until 2005, when, in an atypical move, it was shut down and donated to the local government. “It was like turning the keys of a Ferrari over to somebody that has a learner’s permit,” park director Brad Reams joked.

Today, Great Plains is a manufacturing hub leased by powerful companies in the energy, engineering, and transportation sectors. While the park’s board of directors is appointed by county commissioners, it doesn’t use any taxpayer funds, and generates its own private revenue, at which it is apparently quite good.

“We have about $12 million in assets,” Reams said. “We lease about 4,000 acres for agricultural purposes. We lease buildings, over two million square feet … for warehousing for various goods and services. We have 26 miles of rail that we lease out to a rail company.”

Ammunition manufacturers Day & Zimmermann also lease land there; the explosive thuds from weapons-testing projects can irritate nearby homeowners. Still, Parsonites are proud of the park. “It was a place that helped in the Korean War,” Joe Beachner, who has spent his whole life in the city, said. “Something that helped our economy.”

But last December, something changed. The Parsons Sun had it first: a deal struck between industrial park board members and the nuclear company Deep Fission. A first-of-its-kind nuclear reactor was coming to the park. “I saw it on Facebook, and I thought it was a joke,” Marjorie Reynolds, a home nurse who lives in the area, said. The public was not informed before the deal was completed: Even county commissioners were only told “a week or two” prior, according to Commissioner Terry Weidert. “They just announced it in the newspaper December 4, like it was a done deal,” anti-nuclear activist Ann Suellentrop said. “So arrogant and so dismissive of the public.”

Park officials said they could not inform the public because they were under nondisclosure agreements with Deep Fission and the Department of Energy. “You’ve got intellectual property that … they like to keep under wraps,” Reams said. “If you’re the DOE, it’s a national security risk. It’s an energy project that has national implications.” Zaleski concurred, arguing that the agreement with Deep Fission was a standard one. “That’s just how the cookie crumbles in this industry,” he said.

Holger Meyer, a particle physics professor at Wichita State University with a background in nuclear energy, said the public should have been informed regardless. “There sometimes are good reasons for the desire for nondisclosure agreements,” he said. “But this isn’t something that just impacts the land it is on. It impacts the entire county—the entire region.… There is obvious public interest.”

It didn’t matter. Five days later, park officials, executives of Deep Fission, a smattering of locals, and roughly 40 TV stations gathered in the park for a groundbreaking. Parsons may not have liked it, but it was going nuclear.

Founded three years ago, the California-based start-up Deep Fission was thrust into prominence last August, when its reactor project became one of 11 selected as part of Donald Trump’s “Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program.” The pilot program, created by executive order, fast-tracks the companies’ ability to receive commercial operating licenses. The stated goal at the time was for three reactors to achieve criticality by July 4, 2026; one already has, and the DOE claims two more are on track. Deep Fission is not among them.

This rapid schedule is possible in part because Trump has overhauled the Nuclear Regulatory Commission since the start of his second term, relaxing regulations and inspections to meet demand from data centers. In May 2025, the president ordered the theoretically independent NRC to submit to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, and cut the annual hours........

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