Aalo Atomics has held a ceremony to unveil its completed Critical Test Reactor at the Idaho National Laboratory. The company said it expects the reactor to achieve criticality "well before" the 4 July deadline.
(Image: Aalo Atomics)
Austin, Texas-based Aalo was named in August last year by the US Department of Energy (DOE) as one of 11 advanced reactor projects initially selected for support through its Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program, which aims to see at least three of them achieve criticality by 4 July this year. The initiative is part of the Reforming Nuclear Reactor Testing at the Department of Energy executive order signed by President Donald Trump in May.
Two weeks after being selected, the company broke ground on a plot of land at the border of Idaho National Laboratory (INL) to start construction of its first experimental extra modular nuclear reactor, the Aalo-X.
On Thursday, Aalo held a ceremony - attended by representatives from DOE, INL and supply chain partners, including Paragon Energy Solutions and Amsted Graphite - to unveil the completed reactor. Attendees toured the facility, viewing demonstrations of the control software and hardware, shielding systems, and the reactor itself.
Aalo-X has been manufactured at Aalo's pilot factory in Austin, Texas, before being transported to and installed at the INL site. The test reactor is the precursor to the Aalo Pod, a 50 MWe XMR (Extra Modular Reactor) power plant purpose-built for data centres. Each fully modular Aalo Pod will contain five factory built, sodium-cooled, Aalo-1 reactors, using low-enriched uranium dioxide fuel. The company says it will be in commercial use by 2029.
