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Companies developing small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) have raised more than $1.5 billion in the past year, as tech companies hunger for power to train AI models and governments decide to commit to the industry. <\/p>\n
For example, X-energy raised $700 million<\/a> this month, and Paris-based Newcleo raised $151 million<\/a> last year, and one would be remiss to not mention the $700 million invested into Oklo, NuScale and Nano Nuclear for similar projects in the U.S. <\/p>\n While nuclear fusion still looks relatively far away, SMRs are today\u2019s hot atomic property.\u00a0So it\u2019s significant that SMR startup Valar\u00a0Atomics<\/a> has raised $19 million in a seed funding round to develop its first test reactor. The financing was led by Riot Ventures, with AlleyCorp, Initialized Capital, Day One Ventures and Steel Atlas participating.\u00a0<\/p>\n Valar\u2019s SMR technology is based on a helium-cooled, high-temperature gas reactor. These will be built out of a nuclear equivalent of a \u2018gigafactory\u2019 (where batteries are built), except Valar calls them \u2018gigasites\u2019.\u00a0By effectively creating a production line of SMRs, Valar hopes to drastically reduce the costs associated with building nuclear reactors, which are traditionally bespoke projects.<\/p>\n Valar\u2019s co-founder and CEO, Isaiah Taylor, told TechCrunch that the constraint on building reactors isn\u2019t the technology as much as how it\u2019s deployed. He hopes Valar\u2019s \u2018gigafactory\u2019 approach could fix that by being \u201cindustrial\u201d instead of \u201cartisanal.\u201d<\/p>\n The company plans to build hundreds of SMRs at predominantly off-grid sites to power data centers and industrial plants. It has an initial contract with the Philippines Nuclear Research Institute to build a reactor in the country. Under the contract,\u00a0Valar\u00a0plans to pilot a test-scale reactor, and build two full-scale reactors before the first integrated reactor comes online.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to make the first one, the second one, the third one, and that will organically evolve into a factory,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Valar\u2019s underlying technology uses helium gas to reach temperatures up to 900\u00b0C \u2014 triple that of conventional nuclear reactors. This means Valar could also produce hydrogen efficiently and combine it with captured CO2 to create low-carbon synthetic fuels for vehicles and infrastructure.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you can get a nuclear reactor that hot, you can produce hydrogen very cheaply, and you unlock all sorts of things. One of those things being synthetic fuels. We want to be able to make that process cheap and make the reactors cheap, too,\u201d said Taylor.<\/p>\n \u201cWe designed, engineered, and constructed our thermal test unit in a period of about 10 months. It\u2019s possible \u2014 after all, the first nuclear reactor ever was built in eight months, in 1943,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Taylor, whose grandfather was, coincidentally,\u00a0a nuclear physicist on the Manhattan Project, dropped out of high school at 16, and went on to study software systems as well as found startups. The company\u2019s technical efforts are led by its chief nuclear officer,\u00a0Mark Mitchell<\/a> (the former president of modular reactor firm Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC), and leader of the world\u2019s first small modular reactor project at South Africa\u2019s Pebble Bed Modular Reactor). The startup\u2019s team also has several folks from USNC, including its head of mechanical engineering, Willem van Rooyen.<\/p>\n While the company\u2019s plans are ambitious, there seem to be ample tailwinds for such nuclear projects. The\u00a0U.S.\u2019 Inflation Reduction Act<\/a>\u00a0has unlocked private investment into clean energy infrastructure, while China is\u00a0also investing $440 billion<\/a>\u00a0in new nuclear plants. Plus,\u00a014 of the world\u2019s largest banks<\/a>\u00a0have expressed support for tripling nuclear energy by 2050.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n