New Atomic Age Underway As Three Mini Reactors Go ‘Critical’ By Trump’s July 4 Deadline
Key takeaways
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- Aalo broke ground on the DOE site in August 2025 with the ambitious plan to achieve “criticality” -- the state in which a nuclear reactor sustains a stable chain reaction -- by July 4, 2026.
- Aalo is just the latest small-sized reactor startup to close in on “criticality,” thanks to help from the DOE.
Energy Daily Cover New Atomic Age Underway As Three Mini Reactors Go ‘Critical’ By Trump’s July 4 Deadline With help from national labs, these new nuke startups have accelerated testing, and fundraising.By Christopher Helman,
--:-- / --:--This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.Valar Atomics founder and CEO Isaiah Taylor in front of the Ward 250 test reactor in his El Segundo, California, factory. "Trump called the industry’s bluff . . . and said 'Let’s see what you’ve got.'"By Ethan Pines, for ForbesAll 200 employees from nuclear startup Aalo Atomics’s Austin, Texas headquarters have been flying into Idaho Falls this week to gather at the two-acre construction site, just outside of the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory, where their new Aalo-X reactor is now being put to the test. Aalo brought in Airstream trailers for the event, which CEO Matt Loszak describes as “a nuclear Burning Man,” after the counter culture festival in the Nevada desert.
“We’ll give some emotional speeches,” says Loszak of himself and his co-founder Yasir Arafat, and share a live video feed of the team loading uranium fuel bundles into the reactor core, then removing control rods to allow fission chain reactions to speed up.