Company breaks ground on nation’s first experimental modular reactor

IDAHO FALLS – Two years after the U.S. Department of Energy approved the development of the MARVEL nuclear reactor — ushering in what officials are calling the “second atomic age” — the Idaho National Lab is celebrating another milestone.

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INL officials met with Texas-based Aalo Atomics on a 1-acre parcel inside the INL’s Materials and Fuels Complex Thursday morning for the groundbreaking of Aalo-X, the first experimental extra modular nuclear reactor.

“We’re the only vendor in the country who’s using DOE authorization to build a plant that will produce electricity,” Matt Loszak, co-founder and CEO of Aalo Atomics, the company building the reactor, told those in attendance. “We want to put a data center right next to it. (It’s) a very historic day.”

Together, they will make up what Loszak calls “the world’s first co-located and co-built nuclear plant and data center.”

Aalo Atomics will deploy gigawatt factories around the world to produce several gigawatts of electrical capacity annually. This electrical energy will be used in nuclear and artificial intelligence projects.

Construction on the 5,000-square-foot building will get underway in the next several weeks and is slated for completion on July 4, 2026.

“Our goal is to achieve zero power criticality in 11 months. That means it will not get hot. It’s like turning on the engine of your car without hitting the gas pedal,” Loszak tells EastIdahoNews.com. “Over the subsequent months, we’ll start to produce power.”

The groundbreaking event comes just two weeks after Aalo was selected by the DOE to participate in President Donald Trump’s Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program. The administration aims to beat out China and Russia and lead the world in nuclear and AI innovation.

Since January, the Trump administration has issued four executive orders related to the development of AI. Last month, President Trump signed the AI Action Plan, which calls for the “removal of regulatory barriers that impede AI innovation.” The plan also addresses the need for infrastructure to support AI development.

In its efforts to achieve global AI dominance, Loszak says the Trump Administration has discussed the idea of “deploying nuclear plants at gigawatt scale under DOE authorization on DOE land.”

Aalo spokeswoman Ashley Cohen says the INL site was selected as the location for the first experimental reactor because “it has been the proving ground for practically every new reactor technology built in this country, and the Aalo team has worked with the DOE at the INL to get MARVEL approved for construction.”

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The $136 million project is expected to have a nationwide impact.

“When Aalo-X achieves criticality next year, it will become the first new sodium-cooled reactor to start operation in the U.S. in over four decades,” Aalo Atomics co-founder and CTO Yasir Arafat, who previously led the MARVEL project at the INL, says in a news release. “Aalo-X is just the beginning as we are poised to deploy nuclear power on a scale that far exceeds the first atomic age.”

The construction site is near EBR-II, a nuclear reactor launched in 1964 that was used to test materials and fuels for fast reactors. It was the last reactor built on DOE property when it was shut down in 1994.

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Loszak is glad it’s in close proximity and said he is excited to help usher in the second atomic age with the construction of one of the first nuclear reactors in 50 years.

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“Some of the legendary figures in the nuclear industry who created the first atomic age did so at this site. It’s very exciting that the EBR-II silver dome is visible from here,” he says. “We’re honored to have this opportunity to pick up the baton and carry this forward for the second atomic age, which we hope is here to stay.”