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Valar Atomics has announced that its Nova Core achieved zero-power criticality on November 17 at Los Alamos National Laboratory’s National Criticality Experiments Research Center (NCERC) at the Nevada National Security Site.
It has been about three months since the Department of Energy named 10 companies for its new Reactor Pilot Program, which maps out how the DOE would meet the goal announced in May by Executive Order 14301 of having three reactors achieve criticality by July 4, 2026.
Hawthorne, Calif.–based reactor start-up Valar Atomics recently announced that it has raised $130 million in its Series A funding round, led by venture capital groups Snowpoint, Day One, and Dream.
The Department of Energy’s Idaho Operations Office has approved the Nuclear Safety Design Agreement (NSDA) for Oklo Inc.’s Aurora Fuel Fabrication Facility (A3F) at Idaho National Laboratory. The A3F is being built to fabricate fuel assemblies for Oklo’s Aurora Powerhouse, a liquid metal–cooled, metal-fueled fast reactor with a maximum power of 75 MWe.
Advanced reactor and fuel developer X-energy has officially begun confirmatory irradiation testing at Idaho National Laboratory on its TRISO-X fuel. The testing, which is taking place over the course of the next 13 months, will evaluate the fuel across a variety of operating scenarios and—if all goes according to plan—will be instrumental in qualifying it for commercial use.
The Department of Energy has a plan for private companies to “dispose of surplus plutonium”—about 19.7 metric tons in both oxide and metal forms—by “making the materials available for advanced nuclear technologies.” A Surplus Plutonium Utilization Program request for applications (RFA) issued October 21 describes the plutonium on offer, and the “thresholds” prospective applicants must meet.
The Department of Energy has fast-tracked its selections for the Fuel Line Pilot Program. Four companies—Oklo, Terrestrial Energy, TRISO-X, and Valar Atomics—were named September 30 as “conditional selections” for a “fast-track approach to commercial licensing,” bringing the total to five. The first company conditionally chosen for a DOE-authorized fuel fabrication facility—Standard Nuclear—was named less than three weeks after the program opened to applicants in July.
The race to bring test reactors on line by July 4, 2026, got a boost today when the Department of Energy unveiled the names of 10 companies selected for the Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program—a new pathway that allows reactor authorization outside national labs.
As first outlined in one of the four executive orders on nuclear energy released by President Trump on May 23 and in the request for applications for the Reactor Pilot Program released June 18, the companies must use their own money and sites—and DOE authorization—to get reactors operating. What they won’t need is a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license.