ANS Winter Conference: Nuclear startups applaud DOE executive order on reactor testing

During Tuesday’s panel discussion, “Reforming Nuclear Reactor Testing at the Department of Energy: Implementation of Executive Order 14301,” the companies’ leaders spoke about the benefits of the pilot program, which is intended to speed up the testing of advanced reactor designs to unlock private funding and provide a fast-tracked approach for future commercial licensing activities.

It was one of four executive orders (EOs) from the Trump administration issued in May to bolster the industry to keep up with growing energy demands across the country, primarily driven by AI data centers.

“The opportunity for DOE to provide licensing, oversight, authorization capabilities, and an accelerated way to think differently . . . it’s using a muscle that they just hadn’t used in a long time, but they could, they can, and they are, and that’s going to unleash a lot more that translates from that,” Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitte said. Oklo is currently building its Aurora powerhouse—a 75-MWe liquid metal–cooled, metal-fueled fast reactor—at Idaho National Laboratory.

Similarly, Rita Baranwal, chief nuclear officer at Radiant, said that the pilot allows companies to leverage testing faster and use DOE authorization to translate into a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license toward commercialization.

Bright future for innovation: DeWitte talked about the vast untapped value in the nuclear industry, saying it is massively underinvested at levels ranging from 25 to 1,000 times from where it should be today.

“That means there’s going be a lot more capital that flows into this game and benefits a lot of innovation and ideas, including some things that aren’t going to work—and that’s okay. That’s experience, that's iteration, that’s learning,” he said.

He said the EOs have changed the thought processes around nuclear energy’s potential.

“From the EOs we’ve allowed ourselves very significantly, including this one particularly, to think about the art of what really is possible without the succumbing to the overhangs and constraints,” he said.

Similarly, Valar Atomics CEO Isaiah Taylor said the Reactor Pilot Program allows users to “learn by doing” and fail fast.

He said ultimately there are two things the government provides: permission and funding.

“I truly believe that if you give American technologists permission to test ideas out, iterate them and move quickly, there is nothing stopping us from actually achieving the wildest dreams of the nuclear industry,” Taylor said.

Read more: ANS Winter Conference: DOE, NRC leaders stress need for speedier nuclear approval