Disappointed in Aalo and Oklo’s performance in the pilot program
I know a lot of people here are skeptical about the pilot program and the goal of criticality by July 4th, but this represents some real momentum within the industry. It’s easy to trivialize zero power criticality as just putting a bunch of fuel in a bucket and saying mission accomplished, but the fact that so many of these companies have struggled to accomplish even that shows that it’s not as simple as it sounds. I think the speed at which Antares, Deployable, and especially Valar have been moving is really impressive since it feels like everything else in the advanced reactor space has been painfully slow. Valar doing a zero power test, a full power test, safety demonstration, and even generating a small amount of electricity within the span of a few weeks is unheard of and is a hell of a lot more than putting fuel in a bucket. One of the most impressive things for me though was that I had hardly heard of these companies until they went critical yet they blew the companies that everyone talks about out of the water.
One of those companies that I heard about constantly was Aalo. When the July 4th target was announced, I thought that they would be the first to meet it because they committed to it so hard. It feels like every day I would see them make a LinkedIn post about it or talk about it on their podcast. They even added a countdown timer to July 4th on their website. Then the deadline started actually approaching. Antares went critical, then Valar, then Deployable, and still just talk from Aalo. I thought maybe they were intentionally waiting until the 4th as a marketing stunt. They were still talking about loading the fuel and working around the clock to hit the deadline up until Friday, then nothing. They’ll probably go critical soon, maybe even tomorrow, but all that just to not hit the one deadline they haven’t shut up about for a year is just kind of embarrassing.
Another one that’s constantly getting attention for seemingly no reason is Oklo. They had not one, not two, but three chances since they were the only company that entered multiple reactors into the pilot program: Pluto, Aurora, and Groves (which is actually under Atomic Alchemy but Oklo claims it since they acquired them last year ). Granted, Pluto and Aurora were never supposed to hit the July 4th deadline as far as I can tell, but it strikes me as weird to enter several reactors into the program when you can barely handle one. Groves, however, was scheduled to go critical by the 4th, and they wouldn’t let us forget it. Just like Aalo lots of talk about the deadline, and also a lot of weird bragging about how they built a reactor building. Idk if I’m missing something, but that’s just … not impressive? About a week ago, they quietly moved their target to the end of July instead when it was abundantly clear they weren’t going to make it. Given their track record, I’m not even sure I believe their July deadline.
All that to say, I think we really need to separate the wheat from the chaff as an industry. We have some remarkable companies that are rightfully receiving a lot of credit for their efforts.
I’m worried that the credit won’t mean too much though when it feels like everyone gets a participation trophy and all the broken promises are forgotten. A lot of us are understandably hesitant to criticize since nuclear is such a small world. I personally know people at both Aalo and Oklo who are good people and good engineers, but you can have a million good engineers and still get nothing done if the culture and leadership at a company focuses more on hype than progress. It’s time we start holding people more accountable when they make promises like this because it doesn’t just damage their credibility, but the credibility of the industry as a whole. It also distracts from the real progress that’s being made. Only a few of these companies can succeed, so if everyone and their grandma is coming out with their own startup and circlejerking about their paper reactors, nothing is ever going to get done. If we want to turn this momentum into actual power on the grid then we have to focus on the doers and move on from the talkers. Curious to hear what yall think.