Austin-based Aalo Atomics and the US Department of Energy (DOE) have executed an Other Transactional Agreement (OTA) enabling faster deployment of the Aalo-X demonstration reactor. Aalo Atomics broke ground for its Aalo-X experimental extra modular nuclear reactor (XMR) at Idaho National Laboratory (INL), earlier in September. This came just two weeks after Aalo was selected by DOE to participate in President Trump’s Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program.
Aalo is intending to complete construction of Aalo-X and achieve criticality by July 2026. This is in line with Executive Order (EO) 14301, Reforming Nuclear Reactor Testing at the Department of Energy signed by President Trump in May to fast-track nuclear development.
Aalo said signing the OTA is a pivotal milestone which empowers Aalo to move “at the speed of business” while maintaining government oversight. The agreement entails faster execution, less bureaucracy, and a more streamlined approach to building Aalo-X.
“The OTA provides a flexible framework for public-private collaboration as we move into the construction phase of our first-of-a-fleet reactor at Idaho National Lab,” Aalo said. “We continue to be laser focused on bringing Aalo-X critical by July 4, 2026, to meet the goal outlined in Executive Order 14301…. This week’s finalised OTA will accelerate our efforts to hit this ambitious target.”
An “Other Transactional Agreement” is the same framework that NASA used to facilitate SpaceX’s path to commercialising space exploration. OTAs are ideal vehicles for public-private innovation because they are not classified as procurement agreements, and thus are not subject to certain laws and regulations that could hamper the momentum of demonstration projects.
The OTA means that Aalo is now an official DOE contractor and is no longer required to route contracts through INL. This simplifies project management and reduces regulatory burden. “The first step toward commercialisation is demonstration – what we call Goal 1,” Aalo noted. “This is Aalo-X and dry criticality, the initial controlled fission reaction.”
Aalo-X will be manufactured at Aalo’s 40,000 square foot pilot factory in Austin, Texas, before being transported to and installed at INL. “When Aalo-X achieves criticality next year, it will become the first new sodium-cooled reactor to start operation in the US in over four decades,” said Yasir Arafat, Cofounder and CTO at Aalo Atomics. He has said “the data and lessons learned from our pilot technologies are being fed back into our reactor design”.
However, Arafat offers virtually no information about the reactor itself referencing only a “sodium-cooled reactor”. However, all the earlier examples of reactors cited by Arafat are fast neutron reactors, indicating that this may be the intended design. In May 2024, Aalo said it had completed the conceptual design of the Aalo-1 but gave no detail. Fast reactors are complex facilities and going from conceptual design to criticality in two years seems unlikely.
