First New Nuclear Reactor Constructed at Idaho National Lab in 50 Years to Go Critical.

[NNadir]

Aalo completes assembly of experimental reactor

Friday, 20 March 2026 World Nuclear News.

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...

The scale of the reactor is shown by the photograph below from the article:



It's nice to see new reactors being built at national labs again, a pathway into the 4th nuclear era.

[eppur_se_muova]

1. I can't help but feel I'd be happier with this if Trmp hadn't been associated with it in any way ... but ...

Given the kind of timelines usually involved, I'd think this was a mostly done deal, and all Trmp did was pull out his Sharpie and sign his little row of Klan hoodies. I'm sure he'll take credit for it if it works, and rename it after himself -- but blame it on Biden (and probably Obama -- and probably the Clintons -- Bill and Hillary, and Chelsea and Socks and Buddy, all working closely with Hunter Biden) if it doesn't.

[NNadir]

2. If the Orange Pedophile with his hatred of science leaves nuclear science alone thinking that "woke" people hate it...

...I'll accept that.

After he kicks off, the fate of his name on stuff will be the same as that of Hitler, Goering, Saddam Hussein, etc, subject to erasure.

Hitler pushed for the designing of the Volkswagen bug. It was never called the Volkshitler bug.

The remarkable thing about this reactor is that it is ready to go critical and ground was broken about a year ago.

[Envirogal]

3. What the heck does "woke" have to do with it?

Anyone concerned about the nuclear WASTE and risks of an “incident” is not a bad thing. Brushing it aside is denialism.

And this is not to reduce carbon emissions or reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, but to power AI, the very thing that will destroy human development….if a reactor “incident” doesn’t do it first. And more use of declining water source to cool it?

So, what will they do with the waste other than storing it? Is this government funded or private?
Is the Price Anderson Act applying here if there is an incident? Taxpayers taking on the liability?

Some of use are aWOKEn to the history and waste issues.