Aalo Atomics Breaking Ground on National Lab SMR Nuclear Pilot

A nuclear race turned the corner, and that’s a good thing.

A U.S. Department of Energy pilot program to fast-track advanced and small modular reactor (SMR) development over the next year is moving forward with 10 companies selected earlier this summer. One of those already has started construction in its SMR site at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL).

Austin, Texas-based Aalo Atomics is breaking ground on the work to create its experimental Aalo-X reactor. The construction site is located next to INL’s Materials and Fuels Complex.

The goal, as with all of the companies selected into the DOE’s pilot project, is to reach criticality with that reactor by next July 4. The date is symbolic of patriotism, of course, but the face is accelerated as the U.S. seeks to increase power capacity to meet future load from expanding data center and artificial intelligence (AI) sites.

"When Aalo-X achieves criticality next year, it will become the first new sodium-cooled reactor to start operation in the US in over four decades,” commented Yasir Arafat, co-founder and chief technical officer at Aalo Atomics, who previously led the MARVEL project at the INL. “Aalo-X is just the beginning as we are poised to deploy nuclear power on a scale that far exceeds the first atomic age.”

Aalo Atomics is only one of 10 startups and advanced reactor developers, as noted, within the DOE program. The others are Antares Nuclear Inc., Atomic Alchemy Inc., Deep Fission Inc., Last Energy Inc., Oklo Inc., Natura Resources LLC, Radiant Industries Inc., Terrestrial Energy Inc., and Valar Atomics Inc.

Nuclear fission generates electricity without carbon emissions and also historically performs at the highest capacity factor of any power generation resource currently in use. SMR nuclear is still in the conceptually and design phase in the U.S., but proponents contend it offers less expensive and more adaptable nuclear capacity for the future.

Aalo-X will be manufactured at Aalo’s 40,000 square foot pilot factory in Austin, Texas, before being transported to and installed at INL. The Aalo-X is the precursor to the Aalo Pod which is expected to provide commercial power in 2029.

The Aalo Pod is a 50-MW power plant designed to be purpose-built for data centers. Each Aalo Pod contains five Aalo-1 reactors with the promise to scale to gigawatts. The Aalo Pod, with a small physical footprint and not requiring any external water sources, is easy to collocate onsite with the data center.

The Department of Energy announced the Reactor Pilot Program in June, following President Trump’s Executive Order on streamlining the development process for new nuclear energy programs.

The goal of the program is to accelerate the testing of advanced reactor designs that will be authorized by the Department at sites outside the national laboratories.

“The United States cultivated the effort to design and build the first Generation IV reactor for commercial use, but the federal government has effectively throttled the domestic deployment of advanced reactors, ceding the initiative to foreign nations in building this critical technology,” the president is quoted in that executive order posted in May. “That changes today. It is the policy of my administration to foster nuclear innovation and bring advanced nuclear technologies into domestic production as soon as possible.”