On Saturday, a local organization, seeking answers to questions about the Deep Fission project, hosted a meeting at the Wall Family Event Center.
The Prairie Dog Alliance was founded by an Independence resident, Marjorie Marjorie, who said she was horrified to learn of the Deep Fission project when the Parsons groundbreaking was announced in December. Marjorie has said publicly that she has dozens of family members who live in Labette County, and that she is fighting against the project on these relatives’ behalf. Marjorie noted that she is a pediatric nurse who previously studied engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and spent six years in the military.
“This company is approximately two years old. This technology, the design itself, isn’t complete,” Marjorie said. “Putting a micronuclear reactor a mile deep into the earth and assuming that is going to offset all of the radiation is scary to me.”
She said Deep Fission is operating under an executive order. “An executive order is supposed to be a guideline for helping the laws that exist on the books right now to do what needs to be done. An executive order is not meant to take away the laws that are already in place on the federal level and on the state level.”
Marjorie said that there are laws already in place concerning nuclear material, generating electricity from nuclear facilities.
In addition to concerns regarding the executive order, Marjorie said she was concerned that the Great Plains Development Authority did not speak to nuclear experts regarding the Deep Fission project prior to this project’s groundbreaking.
“I asked one question, and that question was: Did anyone on this board go outside the company to an expert to get any information on this technology and the project itself. There was silence. That scared me. It terrified me. Because where is the due diligence? Those people on that board are not voted on,” Marjorie said.
Members of the Great Plains Development Authority are appointed by the Labette County Commission. Marjorie asked this question along with others during recent Great Plains Development Authority Meetings, starting in December.
During the Dec. 18 meeting, Marjorie asked, “Did any of you go outside of Deep Fission and request from an expert in geology or in nuclear physics their take on this?” She then stated: “Because I have.”
The response to this question came from Great Plains Development Authority Chair Bob Wood, who said: “Our staff’s been working on this for about a year.”
Wood said a lot of investigation has been done.
See FISSION, Page 7.
When Marjorie asked what experts they had spoken to in their research, Wood said that the board didn’t have that information and said that staff had been dealing with that.
During the Jan. 22 GPDA meeting, Marjorie said: “Our concerns center around who is going to be responsible if this company has an accident in this area.”
She said she was concerned about insurance and the limited liability of insurance for nuclear projects. She also highlighted concerns regarding the drastic decrease in Nuclear Regulatory Commission employees in recent months.
“Are you willing to pay for your children and grandchildren’s health with this project? Because I am not,” Marjorie said.
She added that she was appalled and said that the board had not done its due diligence to have experts outside of Deep Fission weigh in on the project, as she mentioned previously. The board explained that prior to the project going public, they could not speak on the project due to nondisclosure agreements, which are commonly used between businesses during preliminary negotiations.
“There’s been a considerable amount of research done by all of us here,” Wood reiterated during that meeting. Specifics as to what that research consisted of have not been discussed.
During Saturday’s meeting, Marjorie said, “The fact that the people in charge or appointed to protect us, to protect our children’s future, did not do their due diligence is just mind-blowing to me, so that is when I formed Prairie Dog Alliance.”
Marjorie was joined by her daughter, Delaney Reynolds, a psychology major at Pittsburg State University, who presented some information regarding the timeline, investors of Deep Fission, and contact information of area representatives.
Delaney noted that Deep Fission reached a $30 million funding goal last year, and claimed they acquired a $56 million deficit as of Sept. 30, 2025, per a third-quarter financial statement available on the company’s website. Though she said there was no explanation about what this deficit was from.
It has been previously reported that the estimated cost to build the reactor, not including engineering costs, would be about $60 million.
Some of the public investors include: 8VC, Deep Future, Wave Function, and Montrose Capital Partners.
Delaney reiterated that there have yet to be any public meetings with Deep Fission concerning this project.
She encouraged attendees to call their representatives to let them know how their constituents feel, providing contact information for the offices of U.S. Representative Derek Schmidt, U.S. Senator Jerry Moran, U.S. Senator Roger Marshall, and Governor Laura Kelly.
Marjorie said she would be at the Parsons Public Library every Tuesday throughout the day to speak with individuals concerning the Deep Fission project.
While she is open to hearing what action other activists would like to take, Marjorie said she doesn’t know for certain what the next steps are, whether that be starting a petition or looking into whether this was an issue that could possibly have a vote called on.
“I just know that the more people that we have involved, the more pushback they are hearing, then the more responsive they are going to be, and they are going to have to be,” Marjorie said.
In further discussion, she said she thought that Deep Fission had chosen Parsons and Labette County for the project because they did not expect opposition.
“I think they chose us because they didn’t expect us to fight back. They were very wrong. They didn’t expect us to organize,” Marjorie said.
Attendees also heard from Henry Stoever, a retired attorney, Overland Park resident, and a member of Peace Works. Marjorie also presented information from Beyond Nuclear and other studies, which claim that Nuclear fission is a detriment to the global climate. A review of these sources will be included in a future second part of this story.
