Valar Atomics says it is the first nuclear startup to reach critical mass
Valar Atomics startup On Monday, it said it had reached a critical milestone — an essential nuclear milestone — with the help of one of the nation’s top nuclear labs. The El Segundo, Calif.-based startup, which announced last week that it had raised $130 million in funding backed by Palmer Lackey and Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar, claims to be the first nuclear startup to develop a critical fission reaction.
It is also, specifically, the first company in a special pilot program of the Department of Energy, which aims to acquire at least three startups by July 4 of next year, to announce that it has achieved this response. The pilot program, which followed President Donald Trump’s executive order signed in May, changed US regulations on nuclear startups and allowed companies to quickly reach new milestones, such as the crisis.
“Zero power factor is the first heartbeat of a reactor, proof that physics proves itself,” Valar founder Isaiah Taylor said in a statement. “This moment marks the beginning of a new era in American nuclear engineering, one defined by the speed, scale, and execution of the private sector with closer federal participation.”
Criticality is the term used for when a nuclear reactor is sustaining a chain reaction – the first step in providing power. Enriched nuclear fuel releases neutrons that collide with other atoms and then split apart. Neutrons from this process then collide with other atoms and start the reaction anew. This process is known as fission. A properly functioning reactor has enough reactions to sustain the fission chain and reach a critical state.
“Think of a long chain of dominoes,” says Adam Stein, director of the Nuclear Energy Innovation Program at the Breakthrough Institute, a modernist eco-policy center. “If you have those dominoes too far apart, the domino won’t reach the next domino. If they’re spaced just right, one will hit the other, then the second, and you’ll have the reaction you expect.”
There is a difference between the kind of crisis the Valar reached this week – what is known as a cold crisis or zero power crisis – and what is needed to actually create nuclear power. Nuclear reactors use heat to generate power, but in cold critical conditions, which are used to test reactor design and physics, the reaction is not strong enough to generate enough heat to generate power.
The reactor that went critical this week isn’t actually the Valar itself, but a combination of fuel and start-up technology with key structural components provided by Los Alamos National Laboratory, one of the DOE’s research and development labs. The hybrid reactor was developed from a separate fuel test conducted in the lab last year, using the same fuel that the Valar reactor will use.
