The New Nuclear Age.

Atomic energy IS ENJOYING AN UNEXPECTED COMEBACK THANKS TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE'S RAVENOUS POWER DEMANDS, WHILE A NEW CROP OF ENTREPRENEURS SEEKS THE FAVOR- AND FAVORITISM-OF THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION. MANY WILL FAIL, BUT THE UPSIDE IS NEARLY UNLIMITED.

- BY CHRIS HELMAN AND PHOEBE LIU

AT AALO ATOMICS’ 40,000-square-foot factory on the south side of Austin, Texas, workers move five-eighths-inch-thick steel plates onto machines that slowly bend and roll them into 12-foot-wide cylinders, which they then weld into 25-foot-tall vessels.

These could be made cheaper by outside contractors. But Aalo cofounder and CEO Matt Loszak wants to do this work in-house, since each vessel will eventually contain the guts of a ten-megawatt (MW) nuclear fission reactor. Five of these Aalo-1 reactor units, working in tandem, will power a single 50 MW electric turbine—enough juice to run a large data-processing center or 45,000 homes.

“It’s not a paper reactor; it’s getting built,” declares Loszak, a 35-year-old Canadian engineer now on his third startup. In August, Aalo broke ground on a two-acre site at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory, where it aims to achieve “criticality” by July 4, 2026—America’s 250th birthday and the deadline President Donald Trump has set for at least three U.S. startups to prove that their advanced nuclear reactor designs work. To achieve criticality, Aalo will load a vessel with off-the-shelf nuclear fuel rod assemblies and then initiate a self-sustaining nuclear fission chain reaction.