Celebrating the arrival of the Golden Era of Nuclear Power
The dawn of the Golden Era of Nuclear Power in the United States was celebrated on June 25, 2026 with music, lights and inspirational speeches. A crowd of several thousand people at Idaho Falls’s Mountain America Center included nuclear professionals from the Idaho National Lab, representatives from the Department of Energy, local dignitaries and entrepreneurs.
Each of the speakers chose walk-up music that they thought was appropriate for the occasion. The roster included John Wagner, the Director of the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) (AC/DC: Thunderstruck), Kyle Haustveit, the U.S. Under Secretary of Energy (Queen: Don’t Stop Me Now), Scott Bedke, Lieutenant Governor of Idaho (Waylon Jennings/Willie Nelson: Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys), and Chris Wright, U.S. Secretary of Energy (Brooks and Dunn: Only in America).
Aside: Lt Governor Bedke explained his song selection. He said, “Don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys. Push them towards the sciences.” End Aside.
At least one audience member said that the event reminded him of a Trump campaign rally with shorter speeches. The speaking program lasted less than 40 minutes.
The bases for declaring the start of a “Golden Era of Nuclear Power” are a set of achievements that only a few could imagine just a year ago. After 50 years without starting any novel reactors in the United States, a handful of exciting new projects have achieved substantial completion. Those projects reached their current state just 14 months after President Trump issued an Executive Order with the audacious goal of achieving criticality for three new reactors by July 4, 2026. The Reactor Pilot Program (RPP) participants were announced just 10 months ago.
Secretary Wright described the genesis of the program, “He [President Trump] said, ‘We’re not going to talk about it. We’re actually going to do it. We’re going to set very bold goals.’ Some people thought crazy bold goals that would lead to disappointment. But he followed up with all of the actions necessary to enable the achievement of those goals.”
The “Golden Era” appellation comes with the stated expectation that the achievements being celebrated are the start of numerous epoch-changing developments.
John Wagner declared, “We know it’s not the end, but rather an essential beginning. One that will enable so much more and that none of us should take for granted. The goal was never just criticality. The goal is 400 GW of nuclear capacity by 2050.”
Three new power and heat production reactors from three young ventures – Antares, Aalo and Deployable – have been constructed or installed at the Idaho National Laboratory. Antares’s Mark-0 successfully completed its initial startup, reaching criticality on June 1, becoming the INL’s 53 reactor. Aalo Atomics’s Critical Test Reactor and Deployable Energy’s Unity Nuclear Battery (UNB) are within days of achieving initial criticality. During the celebration, Sec. Wright gave a progress report on the imminent reactor startups:
“I’m very, very thrilled to announce today that I signed the authorization for Aalo Atomics (loud applause and cheers). Wait, wait what happens in the next few days. I think you can guess what’s gonna happen there. I should also mention Deployable Energy, also here today (more applause) also on the cusp.”
Aside: Deployable Energy joined the race to criticality as one of the first four companies selected to be part of the Nuclear Energy Launch Pad, the successor to the Reactor Pilot Program. End Aside.
Though the celebration event was INL-centric, the speakers also mentioned additional activity that is underway in other locations. Two more reactors are at a similar development stage in Lockhart, TX (Oklo Isotopes’s Groves) and Orangeville, UT (Valar’s Ward 250). After starting operations on June 18, Valar increased the Ward 250’s power to its rated level of 100 kWt and also tested the system at its short term maximum power of 250 kWt. It is conducting a carefully planned sequence of operational and safety tests. Oklo Isotopes’s Groves is complete and close to starting up.
The leaders of the Radiant Nuclear’s Kaleidos DOME testing program chose to skip the race for early criticality in favor of assembling a more complete, full scale power plant. Radiant’s plan is to go critical and then promptly move to full power operations. The final reactor that is under construction at INL, Oklo’s Aurora-INL, is a significantly larger reactor – 75 MWe – that should be ready to operate in 2028.
The reactors include a diverse assortment of coolant, fuel configurations and enrichment levels. In alphabetical order: Aalo’s Critical Test Reactor is a thermal reactor with graphite moderation using fuel consisting of uranium dioxide pellets enriched to < 8%, stacked into cladding tubes and bundled to form fuel assemblies. Antares Mark-0 is a graphite moderated reactor using Triso based, HALEU fuel (uranium enriched to <20%). Deployable Energy’s UNBTM is a water moderated, helium-cooled pressure tube reactor that uses regular UO2 fuel in pressed pellets stacked in zircalloy cladding tubes. Radiant’s Kaleidos is a gas-cooled, graphite moderated reactor using TRISO fuel pressed into cylindrical compacts that are then loaded into prismatic graphite moderator blocks. Oklo’s Groves reactor is an open-pool, water cooled, unpressurized isotope production reactor that uses regular enriched UO2 fuel and its Aurora-INL reactor is a sodium-cooled fast reactor using HALEU fuel in metal alloy fuel elements. Valar’s Ward 250 is a gas cooled, graphite moderated reactor using TRISO coated HALEU fuel embedded in graphite compacts.
Three of the new reactors at INL took advantage of existing facilities and buildings, the other two at INL and the two outside INL are building new facilities from scratch. It has been a very long time since five new reactors were simultaneously under construction at INL. It’s possible that it has never happened before.
INL Site Visit
Before the large gathering at the Mountain America Center, the INL public affairs staff conducted an event and site tour for the Secretary of Energy and his staff. Media representatives were invited to cover the event and tour.
During the event portion the companies that participated in the Reactor Pilot Program had trade show-style tables and displays. Deployable Energy earned its way to the gathering with its rapid progress. Several of the companies in the cohort – Last Energy, Deep Fission, Natura and Terrestrial Energy – had product development plans that did not include an effort to reach criticality before July 4.
Company executives were on hand to meet Secretary Wright and describe their products, their target markets, and the teams they had assembled. The company leaders thanked the Secretary and the Administration for the supportive cooperation provided by the RPP. Their accomplishments would not have been possible without the significantly improved approval processes.
While the Secretary was making his rounds, there was time for media representatives to talk with the founders and with members of the Department of Energy offices responsible for their segment of the program. Many of the senior leaders are part of the generation that has seen just two new reactors constructed during their nearly complete career. They are energized and motivated to keep going by being part of a supportive and encouraging government team. As one senior official stated, he is happy that the new default attitude is to say “yes” or to find a way to the point where “yes” is the right answer.
That same senior official also noted that these new reactors represented a completely different paradigm from the one that produced the first 52 reactors built at Idaho National Laboratory. Instead of government funded, government directed and private company supported projects, all of the new ones are privately funded and privately directed with the support of laboratory experts and the oversight of the government officials at the Department of Energy.
It was great to see founders and company leaders like Jake DeWitt (Oklo), Bret Kugelmass (Last Energy), Isaiah Taylor (Valar), Mark Mitchell (Valar), Doug Bernauer (Radiant), Tori Shivanandan (Radiant), Rita Baranwal (Radiant) Jordan Bramble (Antares), Liz Muller (Deep Fission), Jordan Robison (Natura), Matt Loszak and Yasir Arafat (Aalo), Robin Rickman (Terrestrial Energy) and Bobby Gallagher (Deployable) all in a relatively small room. It was even better to watch them interact and share collegial conversations.
After spending about an hour talking with the companies and hearing their stories, Sec Wright was taken on a tour where he could see the metal that had been formed, the concrete blocks that had been engineered to provide radiation shielding and physical protection, the facilities that had been repurposed and the control displays that had been created. He was also spent time talking to company leaders and briefly spoke to the builders and operators who were on hand. Sec Wright told everyone that he was excited to be able to see new reactors being built.
During the tour, he climbed to the top of the Aalo-X reactor, posed for a selfie with Radiant leaders, saw the concrete slab that forms the top of the shield for the Antares Mark-0 and climbed down to the shielded bunker that now houses Deployable’s Unity Nuclear Battery. He also visited the control rooms for each of the reactors, but those tour stops weren’t observable for the media due to space constraints.
The final stop on the tour – the construction site for Aurora-INL – is about a mile from the concentration of new reactors located in or near the Material and Fuels Complex. Oklo’s construction site is an impressively busy place with numerous large pieces of earthmoving equipment and trailers housing engineers and project managers. Jake DeWitt provided an overview of the site layout and a report on the construction project status. The major site attraction at this stage is the deep hole that will house the Aurora reactor vessel, coolant drain tanks and other key equipment that needs to be located near the lowest elevation of the plant.
Building several pilot micro reactors while establishing and exercising more efficient review and approval processes is a meaningful step forward in what promises to be a long journey full of detours and obstacles punctuated by occasional opportunities to celebrate accomplishments.
It never hurts to take some time to have fun and thank hard-working people. As soon as the celebration was over, it was clear that some of the audience headed back to work. They have to accomplish many additional steps on the way to creating viable commercial products.
The walk off song after the celebration was Kid Rock: American Rock ‘n’ Roll.
