By Matt Busel, who built the apps, crates and game he writes about · every number links to its source and every dataset is downloadable (methods) · corrections · featured in Kirino, gamebiz, This Week in Rust, New Mobile Life, By-Press
Oklo spent $4.5M lobbying, got $2.7M. X-energy spent $280K, got $932M
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Short answer: Lobbying is not buying the nuclear money. We joined every Senate lobbying report from 37 fusion and fission companies (2020 to Oct 2026) with every federal award in USAspending.gov. The biggest lobbyists among the reactor startups, Oklo and Radiant, got back less in federal awards than they paid lobbyists. The quiet ones, X-energy, Kairos, Zap and Xcimer, won the big checks, and mostly before they hired anyone in Washington.
TL;DR: Oklo reported $4.49M of lobbying since 2023 and has $2.70M of federal awards on record, $0.60 back per lobbying dollar; its Feb 2026 DOE Reactor Pilot Program agreement shows $0 obligated. X-energy reported $280K of lobbying (all in 2025-26) and holds $931.6M of awards started since 2020, mostly a $921.7M demonstration award from Feb 2021, four years before its first lobbying report. Across 19 fusion companies, $11.5M of lobbying sits next to $282M of awards, and the winners are the ones with the best engineering milestones, not the biggest K Street bills. TerraPower, Westinghouse, BWXT and Holtec sit outside the ranking for reasons we give below.
Key numbers
| What | Number | Source, checked Oct 27 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Oklo lobbying, 2023 to Q3 2026 | $4,494,000 | Senate LDA reports |
| Oklo federal awards since 2020 | $2,700,000 (4 awards, one at $0) | USAspending.gov |
| X-energy lobbying, 2025 to Q3 2026 | $280,000 | Senate LDA reports |
| X-energy federal awards since 2020 | $931,643,365 | USAspending.gov |
| Radiant lobbying vs awards | $3.94M vs $2.64M | LDA + USAspending, our join |
| Zap Energy lobbying vs awards | $20K vs $18.8M | USAspending.gov |
| 19 fusion companies, lobbying vs awards | $11.5M vs $282M | LDA + USAspending, our join |
The two numbers nobody put side by side
Oklo is the loudest reactor startup in Washington. Its lobbying went from $30K in 2023 to $520K in 2024 to $2.44M in 2025, and it has reported $1.5M more in the first three quarters of 2026.
Its federal award file is three small DOE grants from 2022-23 ($1.9M, $660K, $140K) and one Feb 2026 "Other Transaction Agreement" for the DOE Reactor Pilot Program. That agreement shows $0 obligated. The pilot program lets a company build under DOE authorization; it does not hand it cash.
X-energy sits at the other end. Its first lobbying report is from 2025. By then it already had a $921.7M cooperative agreement from DOE's Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, signed Feb 2 2021, plus smaller awards that bring the total since 2020 to $931.6M. That is $3,327 in awards per lobbying dollar, against Oklo's $0.60.
Follow the money: who wins, who loses
The pattern holds past the headline pair. Radiant reported $3.94M of lobbying and has $2.64M of awards (two small Air Force contracts and one DOE fuel-modeling grant). Kairos reported $980K, all of it in 2025-26, and has $135.5M, almost all from a Feb 2024 DOE risk-reduction award.
In fusion, Commonwealth Fusion Systems is the big spender at $3.40M of lobbying against $50.9M of awards. Zap Energy reported $20K, all in 2026, and holds $18.8M since 2020. Xcimer reported $420K and holds $43.1M. Tokamak Energy: $70K and $14.8M. Pacific Fusion reported $959K of lobbying and has no federal award on record.
So who wins? The companies that hit DOE's competitive selections: the 2021 ARDP picks and the 2023 Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program, which paid CFS, Type One, Zap, Xcimer, Realta, Tokamak and Focused in June-Sep 2024. Who loses? Anyone who thinks a lobbying retainer is a substitute for a design DOE wants to fund.
Why the lobbying spiked anyway
Oklo, Radiant and TerraPower all more than doubled their lobbying in 2025. TerraPower went from $480K in 2024 to $1.135M in 2025; Radiant from $555K to $1.445M.
Our read: the money they are chasing is not grants. It is NRC licensing speed, the DOE pilot program, military microreactor buys and HALEU fuel access. Those are rules and queues, not checks, so they never show up in USAspending. The fight in nuclear moved from "fund us" to "let us build", and the lobbying data says the startups know it.
That also answers the question of who blocks the reactors. In this dataset, nobody is blocking the money: DOE paid the competitive winners on schedule. What the startups pay to move is permission.
The full scoreboard: awards per lobbying dollar
Here is every company in our set with both a lobbying record and an award since 2020, ranked by federal dollars per lobbying dollar. A ratio above 1 means the company holds more in awards than it paid lobbyists; below 1 means the reverse.
| Company | Lobbying 2020-26 | Awards since 2020 | Awards per $1 lobbied |
|---|---|---|---|
| X-energy | $280K | $931.6M | $3,327 |
| Zap Energy | $20K | $18.8M | $940 |
| Tokamak Energy | $70K | $14.8M | $211 |
| Kairos Power | $980K | $135.5M | $138 |
| SHINE Technologies | $935K | $101.3M | $108 |
| Xcimer Energy | $420K | $43.1M | $103 |
| Type One Energy | $950K | $27.9M | $29 |
| Realta Fusion | $485K | $12.8M | $26 |
| Focused Energy | $330K | $7.5M | $23 |
| Commonwealth Fusion Systems | $3.40M | $50.9M | $15 |
| Nano Nuclear | $370K | $1.3M | $3.6 |
| Ultra Safe Nuclear | $820K | $2.7M | $3.3 |
| Terrestrial Energy | $407K | $0.8M | $2.0 |
| Avalanche Energy | $946K | $0.7M | $0.78 |
| Radiant | $3.94M | $2.6M | $0.67 |
| Helicity Space | $280K | $0.2M | $0.62 |
| Oklo | $4.49M | $2.7M | $0.60 |
The bottom of the table is where the lobbying is heaviest. The top is where DOE ran an open competition and the company won it. Fourteen more companies in our set (among them Helion, Pacific Fusion, General Fusion, NuScale, Aalo and First American Nuclear) reported lobbying and have no award since 2020 at all.
What our join cannot see
TerraPower's Natrium plant has a DOE ARDP cost-share worth billions, but USAspending lists only $2.96M of TerraPower awards under any name we tried. We leave TerraPower out of the ratio for that reason; its $4.10M of lobbying is real, its award total here is not complete.
Helion and Thea Energy were also 2023 milestone picks, but we found no milestone award for either in USAspending (Helion's only record is a 2015 grant, before our window). Lobbying totals are whole-filing amounts across every issue, not reactor-only spend. BWXT, Westinghouse and Holtec are incumbents, not startups, and sit outside the ranking: BWXT's $612M since 2020 is mostly weapons-plant management work, and Westinghouse ($7.68M lobbying, $141.8M awards) and Holtec ($460K, $111.6M) hold mixed contract books we did not audit line by line. All three are in the CSV. Award amounts are as USAspending lists them. Everything is in the CSV.
What this means for you
If you are building in energy, the data says spend on the milestone, not the lobbyist: every big check in this set went to a company that won a competitive DOE selection first. If you are an investor in OKLO or another loud name, read the award file before the press release; a $0 agreement is permission, not revenue.
Download the CSV, check any company's award links, and run the same join on your own watchlist. For more on the same money, see our piece on Washington's fusion equity stakes, the deep tech + finance hub, the Frontiers hub and the rest of Tensorust News.
Want this join kept fresh? Company Watch ($99/mo) alerts you on new federal awards, 8-Ks and lobbying reports for the companies you pick. We keep fixing it at no extra cost until it does what it promises.
Not financial advice. Our numbers and our read, so you can check them.
Sources
- Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act reports, 37 clients 2020 to Q3 2026, pulled Oct 27 2026
- USAspending.gov, Oklo DOE Reactor Pilot Program OTA, Oct 27 2026
- USAspending.gov, Oklo DOE award (2023), Oct 27 2026
- USAspending.gov, X-energy ARDP cooperative agreement, Oct 27 2026
- USAspending.gov, Kairos Power DOE risk-reduction award, Oct 27 2026
- USAspending.gov, Zap Energy milestone award, Oct 27 2026
- USAspending.gov, Xcimer Energy milestone award, Oct 27 2026
- USAspending.gov, Radiant Air Force contract, Oct 27 2026
First published here on tensorust.com on Oct 27, 2026. Related: Tensorust News, Deep tech + finance, Company Watch.
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