A privately built nuclear reactor went critical at Idaho National Laboratory on Thursday. It was the first time a private company has pulled that off in the United States in more than 40 years. The last time anything like this happened, Ronald Reagan was in his first term, and the Soviet Union still existed.
The reactor belongs to Antares Nuclear, which says it has raised more than $140 million in private funding. It is not yet generating electricity, but Antares has committed to producing power from the same Idaho facility by 2027. The reactor test took place ahead of a July 4 deadline that President Trump set by executive order.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright noted the historical importance of the moment:
"For the first time in more than four decades, a new privately developed non-light-water reactor has reached criticality in the United States. Thank you to President Trump for his bold leadership and thank you to the bold scientists and entrepreneurs at Antares and Idaho National Laboratory who helped make this moment possible. I look forward to seeing continued progress in the American nuclear renaissance."
Antares CEO Jordan Bramble expressed his team's commitment to the goal:
"Hitting our commitments is everything to us. Nuclear in America has been defined for too long by delays, by companies that said they would and then didn't. We said criticality in 2026, electricity production in 2027, and power to the warfighter in 2028. Today is the first of those commitments delivered on the schedule we set."
The company went from concept to a working reactor in under 12 months. Bramble credited the Reactor Pilot Program's structure and decades of prior DOE investment in the fuel and manufacturing infrastructure behind it.
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The test was conducted with BWX Technologies, a Virginia defense contractor. BWX supplied the fuel, the same material it developed for Project Pele, the Pentagon's program to build nuclear reactors that can be moved and deployed with troops. The U.S. Army was involved throughout because the military wants these reactors at bases and remote installations that cannot rely on the commercial power grid.
Dr. Jeff Waksman, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installation, Energy and Environment, said:
"Antares is the first company in that program to achieve criticality. Next, we need to see a reactor generate electricity at full power. Then the Army will take the baton and deliver a full electricity-generating nuclear reactor to a military installation."
Mark Peters, president of the American Nuclear Society, noted that other reactors in the program are expected to go critical in the coming weeks.
"Criticality is a starting line, not a finish line. The work ahead is scaling up, both the reactors themselves and the professors, students, and skilled workers we need to build and operate the next generation of reactors."
American nuclear spent decades going nowhere, buried under regulatory delays and cost overruns. The Trump administration cut a faster path and handed it to private industry. Antares walked it and has committed to electricity production by 2027, with military deployments to follow in 2028. If the schedule holds, the United States will have privately built nuclear reactors powering military installations before the end of the decade.
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