The bases for declaring the start of a “Golden Era of Nuclear Power” are a set of achievements that only a few could imagine just a year ago. After 50 years without starting any novel reactors in the United States, a handful of exciting new projects have achieved substantial completion. Those projects reached their current state just 14 months after President Trump issued an Executive Order with the audacious goal of achieving criticality for three new reactors by July 4, 2026. The Reactor Pilot Program (RPP) participants were announced just 10 months ago. //
Three new power and heat production reactors from three young ventures – Antares, Aalo and Deployable – have been constructed or installed at the Idaho National Laboratory. Antares’s Mark-0 successfully completed its initial startup, reaching criticality on June 1, becoming the INL’s 53 reactor. Aalo Atomics’s Critical Test Reactor and Deployable Energy’s Unity Nuclear Battery (UNB) are within days of achieving initial criticality. During the celebration, Sec. Wright gave a progress report on the imminent reactor startups: //
Though the celebration event was INL-centric, the speakers also mentioned additional activity that is underway in other locations. Two more reactors are at a similar development stage in Lockhart, TX (Oklo Isotopes’s Groves) and Orangeville, UT (Valar’s Ward 250). After starting operations on June 18, Valar increased the Ward 250’s power to its rated level of 100 kWt and also tested the system at its short term maximum power of 250 kWt. It is conducting a carefully planned sequence of operational and safety tests. Oklo Isotopes’s Groves is complete and close to starting up.
The leaders of the Radiant Nuclear’s Kaleidos DOME testing program chose to skip the race for early criticality in favor of assembling a more complete, full scale power plant. Radiant’s plan is to go critical and then promptly move to full power operations. The final reactor that is under construction at INL, Oklo’s Aurora-INL, is a significantly larger reactor – 75 MWe – that should be ready to operate in 2028. //
Three of the new reactors at INL took advantage of existing facilities and buildings, the other two at INL and the two outside INL are building new facilities from scratch. It has been a very long time since five new reactors were simultaneously under construction at INL. It’s possible that it has never happened before. //
As one senior official stated, he is happy that the new default attitude is to say “yes” or to find a way to the point where “yes” is the right answer.
That same senior official also noted that these new reactors represented a completely different paradigm from the one that produced the first 52 reactors built at Idaho National Laboratory. Instead of government funded, government directed and private company supported projects, all of the new ones are privately funded and privately directed with the support of laboratory experts and the oversight of the government officials at the Department of Energy.
