“Startup Valar Atomics said on Monday that it achieved criticality—an essential nuclear milestone—with the help of one of the country’s top nuclear laboratories. The El Segundo, California-based startup, which last week announced it had secured a $130 million funding round with backing from Palmer Luckey and Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar, claims that it is the first nuclear startup to create a critical fission reaction.

It’s also, more specifically, the first company in a special Department of Energy pilot program aiming to get at least three startups to criticality by July 4 of next year to announce it had achieved this reaction. The pilot program, which was formed following an executive order president Donald Trump signed in May, has upended US regulation of nuclear startups, allowing companies to reach new milestones like criticality at a rapid pace…

Criticality is the term used for when a nuclear reactor is sustaining a chain reaction—the first step in providing power…

There’s a difference between the type of criticality Valar reached this week—what’s known as cold criticality or zero-power criticality—and what’s needed to actually create nuclear power. Nuclear reactors use heat to create power, but in cold criticality, which is used to test a reactor’s design and physics, the reaction isn’t strong enough to create enough heat to make power.

Before this year, startups like Valar would have to go through the country’s nuclear regulator, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), before trying any criticality tests. The NRC, which has a lengthy licensing process, traditionally maintains authority over all nuclear reactors. This includes small modular reactors, which, as their name suggests, are much smaller than traditional nuclear reactors; these advanced technologies, like the ones Valar is trying to bring to market, have never been commercially deployed in the US. However, both the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy have some legal ability to develop their own reactors without going through the NRC, including some solely used for research purposes.”

From Wired.