There are three startups providing fireworks for the Department of Energy’s Fourth of July celebration to mark a major nuclear milestone. They launched modern reactors as part of a pilot program aimed at speeding things up Energy Secretary Chris Wright is calling “America’s nuclear renaissance” to develop and deploy next-generation nuclear energy.
Other companies in the pilot program have signaled they could reach criticality – a term used to describe a nuclear reactor sustaining a chain reaction, a key step in providing energy – shortly after July 4, the deadline set by President Donald Trump in an executive order last year. But experts say that while the pilot is good PR for the industry, there is still a long way to go before the modern reactor designs become a commercial reality.
“These prototypes mean everything and nothing,” says Adam Stein, director of the Nuclear Energy Innovation program at the Breakthrough Institute. “They do a lot for companies that reach critical levels, but even for those companies, they are not commercial products. They are test reactors.”
For decades, the U.S. nuclear landscape was dominated by enormous delicate water reactors, which exploit water to transfer heat and sustain a nuclear reaction. The dream of building smaller reactors with different, more creative designs has long remained out of reach, due in part to a tardy regulatory environment and the enormous upfront costs compact companies must incur to develop modern reactor designs.
“The industry has long been perceived as static – a nuclear reactor was always 10 years away,” Stein says. The pilot program “shows that’s not true if you intentionally move faster. It changes the narrative and it changes perceptions. It means a lot to the investing community.”
In February, the Department of Energy quietly cut a range of environmental and safety regulations for reactors operating within the department, including those built under the pilot program. (Similar regulatory cuts are currently under development at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which approves reactors that will be sold commercially.) Stein says shortening processes for requirements such as environmental impact statements, which can take years, has provided “significant time savings” for companies participating in the program.
The reactor projects in the pilot program benefited not only by reducing bureaucracy. Several companies also rely on federally funded national laboratories. Valar Atomics achieved criticality tardy last year at Los Alamos National Laboratory, using a core with launch fuel and key structural components provided by the lab. (Earlier this month, the company reached criticality again with a second reactor at a state-funded lab in Utah). Antares Nuclear and Deployable Energy — the remaining startups in the pilot program that met the July 4 deadline set by the executive order — also reached critical status in national laboratories.
Matt Loszak, co-founder and CEO of Aalo Atomics, believes the government prioritized the development of the modern reactor because of the speed at which his company was able to operate. His company is participating in a pilot program and has not yet reached the critical level, although he hopes it will happen soon.