Tuesday, 30 June 2026

Aalo Atomics plans to achieve initial criticality for Aalo-X, its first commercial scale reactor, in July 2026. The company's facility at Idaho National Laboratory is completed, with the reactor and primary systems installed.

The remaining steps before criticality include the Department of Energy's issuance of the final Documented Safety Analysis, fuel receipt, and fuel loading, according to Yasir Arafat, Aalo's co-founder and Chief Technical Officer. Reactor fuel for Aalo-X is being manufactured by Global Nuclear Fuels in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Manufacturing footprint

Aalo Atomics built a 40,000 square foot pilot scale manufacturing plant in Austin, Texas in just one year. The pace of that build, combined with the completed Idaho site, places the company among the small modular reactor developers furthest along toward a first fission event.

Cost target

The company has a stated goal of achieving an electricity production cost of less than 3 cents per kilowatt hour. That target, if met, would put Aalo-X output in the range of the cheapest dispatchable generation on US grids and well below typical merchant nuclear costs disclosed in recent SMR project filings.

Context

Aalo-X is one of several advanced reactor designs working through the Department of Energy's demonstration pathway at Idaho National Laboratory rather than the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's commercial licensing route. The Documented Safety Analysis is the gating safety document for DOE-authorized reactors, and its issuance is the final regulatory hurdle Arafat identified ahead of fuel loading.

The July 2026 criticality target is the next observable signal. A slip in DOE's Documented Safety Analysis issuance, or in the fuel delivery from Global Nuclear Fuels' Wilmington facility, would be the most likely cause of delay.

Indiana Governor Mike Braun signed a Letter of Intent with Eli Lilly to collaborate on a future pathway for nuclear energy solutions in Indiana, including small modular reactors (SMR) and other advanced nuclear technologies.

The agreement establishes a framework for the state and the Indianapolis-based pharmaceutical company to explore and evaluate the technical, economic, regulatory, and environmental feasibility of nuclear energy solutions in Indiana, according to Power Engineering.

"Indiana is leading on nuclear power, because more energy means lower energy prices for Hoosier families," Braun said.

The Letter of Intent pairs the state with one of its largest corporate electricity consumers. Eli Lilly's manufacturing footprint has expanded sharply as the company scales production of its weight-loss and diabetes drugs, lifting industrial power demand in Indiana.

The collaboration covers SMRs alongside other advanced reactor designs. SMRs are nuclear reactors designed for factory build and on-site assembly, and developers including NuScale Power, GE Hitachi, and Holtec have advanced US licensing work for the technology.

Indiana retired or converted a significant share of its coal fleet over the past decade and currently has no operating commercial nuclear plants. The Braun administration's move signals interest in nuclear as a dispatchable option to meet rising load from data centers, electrification, and industrial expansion, though the Letter of Intent commits the parties only to study feasibility rather than to build.

The agreement does not specify a site, technology vendor, capacity, or timeline for any reactor project.

The Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) and Kazakhstan's National Nuclear Center (NNC RK) have signed a memorandum of cooperation to launch EAGLE-4, a fourth-phase joint research project on fast reactor core safety experiments, according to World Nuclear News.

The agreement was signed by NNC RK Director General Erlan Batyrbekov and JAEA President Masanori Koguchi, World Nuclear News reported. The two institutions framed the cooperation as support for the implementation of fast reactors.

Per World Nuclear News, the EAGLE-4 work programme includes several in-pile experiments, twelve out-of-pile experiments, and a series of small-scale tests. NNC RK said it is in discussions with JAEA on continuing the project through to 2031, according to the same report.

Earlier EAGLE phases delivered a substantial experimental base. World Nuclear News reported that about 200 preparatory tests were carried out, along with two intermediate-scale and nine full-scale reactor experiments, plus more than 65 out-of-pile tests at the EAGLE test-bench.

The extended cooperation runs alongside Japan's domestic fast reactor programme. A demonstration fast reactor is planned to operate by 2050, according to World Nuclear News.

Japan's Cabinet revised the strategic roadmap for fast reactor development on 23 December 2022, World Nuclear News reported. The revision selected a sodium-cooled fast reactor as the target of the demonstration reactor's conceptual design, with that design work set to begin in fiscal 2024.

Bulgaria's Council of Ministers approved a derogation from EU sanctions allowing the Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant to import components and parts from Russia, according to World Nuclear News. The exception, granted on Wednesday, carves out relevant parts of EU Council Regulation 833/2014 to permit a public procurement contract that will run for the duration of supply contracts.

Kozloduy supplies about 34% of Bulgaria's electricity, World Nuclear News reported. The plant sits in the northwest of the country on the Danube River and operates two Russian-designed VVER-1000 units that have completed refurbishment and life extension programmes, taking operating life from 30 to 60 years. Unit 5 was connected to the grid in 1987 and unit 6 in 1991, according to the same report.

The derogation follows operational disruption over the past winter. Unit 6 was taken offline twice in that period after issues said to be related to sourcing replacement parts from a Russian supplier, World Nuclear News reported.

Bulgaria is also pursuing new Westinghouse AP1000 capacity at the site. The aim is for unit 7 to be operational in 2035 and unit 8 in 2037. The 2300 MWe combined capacity of the two new units would exceed the 1760 MWe capacity of the closed first four units at Kozloduy, according to World Nuclear News.

Rosatom's TVEL fuel division has manufactured the initial fuel load for unit 4 of India's Kudankulam nuclear plant at the Elektrostal Machine-Building Plant, according to World Nuclear News.

The supply falls under a contract agreed in 2024 covering the lifetime fuel needs of the VVER-1000 reactors at units 3 and 4, World Nuclear News reported.

The two operating units at the site, Kudankulam 1 and 2, have been in commercial operation since 2014 and 2017, World Nuclear News reported. Both are Russian-supplied VVER-1000 pressurised water reactors owned and operated by Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd.

According to World Nuclear News, the adoption of TVS-2M fuel has extended the interval between refuelling shutdowns from 12 months to 18 months.