Tuesday, July 14, 2026

The DOE’s “Reactor Pilot Program” had four new companies reach the July 4th deadline!

Happy Tuesday!  Welcome back to another week of ESC News Blog.  We hope you enjoyed your weekend and have been able to stay out of the rain which seems to be with us this week. 

By now you probably realize we like energy as well as tie-ins to our previous blogs.  We blogged about nuclear energy in the past as it receives new interest with data centers coming online and being the new power hogs.  Last year several Texas Universities embraced nuclear with them partnering and/or expanding their nuclear programs (Hint: check out our blogs on TAMU, TTU, and ACU).   The current administration and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) unleashed their, “Reactor Pilot Program” trying to fast track small modular reactors and ten companies started the adventure.  Let’s see who made the deadline of July 4th.    

Did anyone happen to read EnergyTech’s Transition Newsletter on July 6, 2026, their article titled, “Happy Birthday, America: Advanced Nuclear Reactors Achieve Four by the Fourth to Meet DOE Criticality Goals”?  In the article, it speaks on how the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) “Reactor Pilot Program”  which selected ten nuclear energy new ventures to help them fast track permitting and other governmental assistance for their small modular reactors (SMR) and other innovative reactor ventures as well as helping them by placing their support behind them to help them unlock private money, nonetheless there was a catch they had to complete their task by July 4th, 2026, four companies completed by the deadline.  The four new ventures which reached the goal post were Antares Nuclear “Mark-0”, Valar Atomics “Ward 250”, Deployable Energy “Unity”, and Aalo Atomics “Aalo-X”.  These four companies showed we are motivated to advance nuclear energy and proving we are leaders in the what’s next in nuclear energy.  The small modular reactor (SMR) is scalable and is manufactured at a facility and assembled onsite to power data centers and other industrial sites, this way they won’t need to tie into America’s grid.  We wish all these new ventures luck bringing their innovations to market and turning on the lights! If you would like to read more of the article from EnergyTech, please click the link: Happy Birthday, America: Advanced Nuclear Reactors Achieve DOE Criticality Goals |Energy Tech.

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We hope you have a wonderful evening!

**Disclaimer: You may be charged a fee to read EnergyTech’s article. **