Valar achieves cold criticality at LANL

This early milestone for the company was supported by and builds on LANL’s Deimos experiment. It also comes shortly after the company announced that it had raised $130 million in its Series A funding round.

More details: According to Valar, the Deimos critical assembly established the test geometry and instrumentation approach used for Nova. Beyond bringing experience alone to the joint project, LANL also provided many of the components used.

The NCERC team ultimately played a significant part in each step of the experiment, supplying the critical assembly, test instrumentation, experiment platform and reflectors, data analysis expertise, and validation oversight.

Valar provided the reactor core, system configuration, and the TRISO fuel itself. Nova, which is graphite moderated in addition to being TRISO-fueled, was configured to closely model the Ward250, the start-up’s flagship reactor.

Some background: Ward250 is a 100-kWt helium-cooled high-temperature gas reactor. Valar aims to deploy it through the Department of Energy’s Reactor Pilot Program. In September, the company broke ground at Utah San Rafael Energy Lab for its first deployment of the reactor. It is aiming to meet the July 4, 2026, criticality deadline set by President Trump’s Executive Order, “Reforming Nuclear Reactor Testing at the DOE.”

Quotable: In a statement to Wired, Valar founder and CEO Isaiah Taylor said that the Reactor Pilot Program “is about creating a predictable framework so companies and national labs can actually plan work,” and that the program “gives us access to sites, national lab expertise, and federal oversight that ensure each stage is done correctly.”

Go deeper: For an update on how each company in the Reactor Pilot Program is faring, read more on Nuclear NewsWire.