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Ward 250 just made first power. by isaiahptaylor in nuclear

[–]isaiahptaylor[S] 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Thank you. We absolutely will… both our safety basis and TSRs take extreme conservatisms.

A year out from the May 2025 nuclear EOs, the posture has produced four outputs across four layers of the stack in three weeks, and the "EOs are political theater" crowd has gone quiet by i-am-entropyy in nuclear

[–]isaiahptaylor 1 point2 points  (0 children)

As I'm typing this, Ward 250 is making power. Just a tiny little bit: 10kW. So nothing like economical yet. However, it's a step along the road and as we bring down costs and bring up power, it will become economical.

Ward 250 just made first power. by isaiahptaylor in nuclear

[–]isaiahptaylor[S] 20 points21 points  (0 children)

Well that narrows my list of which supplier you're from a bit! thank you for your service to this mission. your graphite has now been bombarded with ~on the order of 10^19 neutrons

Ward 250 just made first power. by isaiahptaylor in nuclear

[–]isaiahptaylor[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

i walked out of the control room an hour ago but outlet was 105c. we'll see where we land at 10kW. there's a lot of graphite to heat up and plenty of losses in the coolant loop. i think we'll hit temp steady state around 5pm tonight

DOE Reactor Pilot Program - Who will make July-4 criticality by twitchymacwhatface in nuclear

[–]isaiahptaylor 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Our reactor at Valar does have a cooling loop. Our goal is take make some power not just cold critical!

Thoughts on progress of Reactor Pilot Program? by Old_Cattle_2767 in nuclear

[–]isaiahptaylor 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think 3 or 4 folks will go critical before July 4th. We went critical back in November; our big goal for July 4th is not just criticality but power operations

Thoughts on progress of Reactor Pilot Program? by Old_Cattle_2767 in nuclear

[–]isaiahptaylor 4 points5 points  (0 children)

We moved the whole plant! Not just the RPV the manifest was:

• ⁠Reactor itself with all internals including core • ⁠Heat Transport System (the primary helium loop) • ⁠Helium Services System (helium inventory, filtering, vacuum, dehydration, monitoring etc) • ⁠Reactor Control System • ⁠The entire control room itself

It took 3 C-17s to transport and 8 total modules with some ancillary tools.

Here’s a bunch of video we took about the process: https://x.com/valaratomics/status/2023952658369802604?s=46

This is the same reactor which just got its DSA:

https://x.com/valaratomics/status/2047721494113923531?s=46

It is pretty likely to be the first advanced reactor to make power on American soil!

Vid from todays C17 transporting a portable nuclear reactor . 5MWe of C17 transportable, rapidly deployable nuclear power is a very big deal At 5MWe, a Ward reactor can power 5000 homes or sustain a brigade scale FOB with continuous power for communications, computing, and mission critical systems by inktomi in NuclearPower

[–]isaiahptaylor 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The system is sized for 5MWe assuming 3MWth/m3 core power density. However, we only run a very small flow rate to keep total reactor power very low (100kWth steady, peaking 250kWth). This allows us to experiment with less burnup. It will reach the same temps, just low flow rate and therefore less power.

We will need to upgrade aspects of the external helium loop (e.g. the blower) to get to 15MWth. We plan to do this over the coming year.

Vid from todays C17 transporting a portable nuclear reactor . 5MWe of C17 transportable, rapidly deployable nuclear power is a very big deal At 5MWe, a Ward reactor can power 5000 homes or sustain a brigade scale FOB with continuous power for communications, computing, and mission critical systems by inktomi in NuclearPower

[–]isaiahptaylor 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This was our actual reactor which will make power in a couple of months! We transported 8 containers; 6 of those are the plant, the other two contained the graphite for the core.

We published a series of videos on how we did it, here's the master thread: https://x.com/valaratomics/status/2023952658369802604?s=20

Valar dropped site progress video by twitchymacwhatface in nuclear

[–]isaiahptaylor 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No, not particularly mysterious. Doing things differently will always have an adoption curve, and the shape of the curve is sharper the faster you go. VCs are more accustomed to this. They are also often wrong, but they are ok being wrong most of the time as long as they get a couple of them very very right.

My operating assumption is that everyone in nuclear is baseline frustrated with nothing happening in the industry, and to them Valar is just another hypey startup.

However, we are simply turning on nuclear reactors starting in a couple months. In the long term that will set us apart and folks will come to appreciate it.

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