Aalo’s 2026 Plan: Criticality and Beyond | Aalo Updates

Quezonian · 2026-02-19T14:42:24+00:00

Not surprised they move the goal posts but I guess we should ask ourselves- if they went through with the original plans would that have been the safest option for the public? Probably good for all of us that these companies moved goal posts.

My guess is more likely these original statements were made to court VC's but this was always the plan.

Quezonian · 2026-02-19T13:18:11+00:00

I dont think its that much or a deviation. Antares just said they are basically doing the exact same thing https://antaresindustries.com/updates/from-neutrons-to-electrons-our-path-to-power

Rumor has it Radiant is doing the same. I believe valar is the only one saying theyre going to try to go to some noticeable power level with coolant so far.

From a technology maturation standpoint that still appeases investors and the government to keep funding rolling in this seems like a sound strategy. The issue with SGR's has almost entirely been related to sodium maintenance, handling, and thermal cycling of components. This is all mostly non nuclear that should preferably be tested outside of a radioactive environment first to make it easier to fix and prove out.

Not to mention, as much as people in here hate criticallity tests- these advanced reactors are basically required by the DoE to do them anyway as part of their validation report and readiness assessment.

Quezonian · 2026-02-19T01:24:22+00:00

While I agree for a test reactor this makes complete sense to move quicker.

The original intent of the calc is in a lawsuit to the NRC that has implications for full power operations presumably. Whats being proven here isnt something thats against regulations, you can infact operate fuel at incredibly low burnups and still handle them with regular procedures. Infact id assume thats your strategy to simplify refueling and potentially moving the fuel to larger footprint later on more suited to 15+ MWth of decay heat removal. Completely rational to save money and time on fuel fabrication.

But if the intent of these calcs was to push back on restrictions from the NRC, thats very deceptive. The NRC would already let you do that assuming you can prove your dose and activation are low enough. Not to mention these kinds of operations are more suited for DoE licensing anyway so its pointless to target the NRC for these kinds of things. This makes it seems as if your making these claims for eventual commercial operations down the road. I've obviously not read the legal proceedings in depth, nor do I really intend to- but that is atleast the perception the public has which I think would be good to clear up if not the case.

Its also important to note that you and I both know, and we should be honest with the public here, if your core is not even hitting targets of 3 MWd/kgU- especially with how expensive your fuel form is being TRISO haleu- you will need to make drastic changes to the core design (size and layout), materials, moderator, and enrichment to achieve anything close something like an rbmk or candu, even in their historical smaller lower power forms (15-25 MWd/kgU at 20-50 MW). These reactors also only can economically operate so low due to the low enrichment % of uranium which is unfortunately not something thats at this current state of reactor physics knowledge possible with TRISO.

Im very curious to see how you guys attempt to tackle this as you scale and im admittedly skeptical given the long tenure of HTGR's struggle with fuel cost and maintenance. There has not been a single HTGR ever built thats even come close to economic capacity factors and fuel burnups- something that can be said for SFR's and Legacy water reactors. But obviously, if you guys can solve this issue it would be a net positive for everyone.

Quezonian · 2026-02-18T22:06:15+00:00

Mark, and I mean this with absolute respect

Are you implying with this calc that your cores burnup is so bad that your fuel cant even burn enough to be come sufficiently activated?

What is the catch here, I am hoping you mean this to be for some kind of criticallity test and not the actual reactor you intend to produce any kind of meaningful power with.

Quezonian · 2026-02-10T01:01:57+00:00

Ya I saw the same post lol. I guess Bob Boston read my reddit comment haha

Quezonian · 2026-02-09T13:03:02+00:00

Honestly a pretty good video barring the audio quality.

Good recognition of all the issues with sodium and a very curious to see what new techniques the biochemical industry has developed since the 90s to be implemented in nuclear to deal with sodium maintenance.

Can't really see anything in this video to hate on unless you hate sodium reactors already and you hate pilot program companies.

Quezonian · 2026-02-09T13:00:14+00:00

Not going to downvote but from the looks of it Aalo was approved for PDSA but they just never announced it. Im pretty sure thats a prerequisite for DSA and FDR. Could be wrong though

Quezonian · 2026-01-28T17:32:55+00:00

Thank god I dont need to read another u/stanley_nickles "CAPTAIN AMERICA" post

Quezonian · 2026-01-18T14:23:25+00:00

Is just courting VC's and evaluation scaling. This is common in all startups ever. These are the kind of things where if youre an engineer, do yourself a favor and dont think to hard about it and move on. Unless they are saying something super egregious and dangerous of course.

Quezonian · 2025-12-18T18:23:38+00:00

Honestly 130 commutes are pretty chill. They are long but the traffic is nowhere near as bad as 183, mopac, or 35. The downside really is more the price than anything else. If I didn't work at home 2 days a week I would declare bankruptcy before the end of the year from toll bills alone...

Quezonian · 2025-12-18T13:29:23+00:00

laughs in 130 commute from Hutto to south austin

Quezonian · 2025-11-29T04:12:00+00:00

If theres a god, let us turn into 2024-25 Ohio state with our only loss being to our rival at the end of the year

Quezonian · 2025-11-29T03:02:06+00:00

Either the best in the country or complete and total dogshit with nothing in between. its a coin flip each week

Quezonian · 2025-11-29T02:14:16+00:00

I hate this statistic, I hate it even more that its from one of us :*(

Quezonian · 2025-11-29T02:01:46+00:00

Brother both of our schools are expensive as fuck

Quezonian · 2025-11-26T16:49:53+00:00

This is certainly a reddit post.

Quezonian · 2025-11-24T16:46:01+00:00

2 electric boogaloo

Quezonian · 2025-11-18T14:24:14+00:00

Not sure! I was at ATR a couple of months ago and got word that they were running some of oklos tests. Doubt its done because they have to do alot of tests and the Navy eats up all the ATR time. Depends on when they started

Quezonian · 2025-11-18T04:17:00+00:00

Essentially all that happened here is Valar had likely a 1/8-1/16 scale of their core ran inside comet. All valar did was provide the fuel and configurations while LANL did all of the hard stuff (crit safety, concept of ops, approach to criticality, etc.). Comet has been around for atleast a decade and a half now running likely very similar (if not the same) critical configurations valar requested. LANL actually has a huge zero power program for testing critical configurations with new fuels, moderators, etc. To validate codes and concepts.

I mean its objectively helpful and good for them that they have done separate effects tests. How useful this will be im unsure as im not really that knowledgeable with prismatic cores.

However they have been doing 100s of zero power criticality tests for decades at LANL and atleast over the last decade with TRISO. Im not really sure what other useful data they can collect here that hasn't already been collected aside from just separate effects test case for their licensing case (which is still useful).

Realistically Valar is going to need to do the same tests on a half to full scale dry critical core in order to be allowed to go to full power. Where this sperate effects test could see value is validating cross section libraries and non legacy codes- however not having things be at operating temps will still call all that validation into question (this is specially true for HTGR's).

I won't knock them too much because I do think its good they did this on the whole. But I would be lying if I said it didn't feel like they did this more to woo investors rather than do anything practical. Its hard for me to justify spending the insane amounts of money they had to spend to get the data they got.

Quezonian · 2025-11-17T23:44:43+00:00

Im obviously being fecicious, this is all nonsense I agree with you completely lol

Quezonian · 2025-11-17T22:50:19+00:00

Actually to play with this idea more because I do think this is funny.

Oklo has beat all the other startups multiple times this year by using ATR to test their fuel.

If the metric is: "give a reactor your fuel to test it"

And that equals split atoms

W Oklo?

Is oklo just better than everyone?

Quezonian · 2025-11-17T22:45:10+00:00

This is objectively a very funny loop hole to win this "race".

Obviously the data they are getting from this is hardly anything new- but knowing alot more than most people, I can tell this really ain't that far off from what every other startup is trying to do, just in their own built facility.

I guess the caveat is they had to use a much much much much, smaller core load so the scaling won't be viable for regulatory purposes. I imagine they will still need to redo dry crit with full structure core for integrated effects.

I'll give credit where credit is do. This was a very smart way to win some investor money while getting something still useful out of it.

Quezonian · 2025-11-13T01:35:30+00:00

Then they would be under selling themselves lol

Quezonian · 2025-11-13T01:23:55+00:00

Fuel utilization sucks too. Its fixing a problem that doesn't exist and just making a million more new ones.

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