The Department of Energy's Reactor Pilot Program has radically cut regulations for new nuclear reactors, accelerating a corporate race toward deployment. This move follows a directive from President Trump, issued about one year ago, setting a goal for American companies to build at least three new experimental nuclear reactors by July 4, 2026, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The program is designed to help companies quickly build and run test reactors, prioritizing speed over established safety protocols.
Two corporations have already announced achieving “criticality,” the point at which their reactors switch on. Antares Nuclear declared its reactor critical on June 4, 2026, just this month. Valar Atomics followed suit on June 18, 2026, also this month, and is now extracting tens of kilowatts of heat from a new reactor core operating out of a tentlike structure in the Utah desert.
Other companies are nearing the July 4 deadline, a rapid pace that industry figures celebrate. Nick Touran, chief nuclear officer at Ocean Atomics, remarked, “We haven't done anything this fast, basically ever.” Touran, whose company aims to integrate nuclear power into civilian ships, stated that the pilot program could “jump-start America’s nuclear industry.” He expressed excitement about “actually building these little reactors and trying it out” to “look at what the economic story is and find out if there’s a market.” This focus on market expansion and economic gain underscores the profit motive driving the accelerated development.
Who Pays the Price?
This rapid deregulation has ignited serious alarm among safety experts. Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, dismissed the race as “essentially an exercise in public relations.” He warned that the slashing of regulations systematically undoes decades of safety lessons hard-won in the nuclear industry. “This is taking us back to the 1950s,” Lyman asserted, “and that is not progress.”
Much of this work is centralized at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory, where several firms have established operations. Radiant, a company aiming to produce small reactors for diverse applications from disaster relief to data centers, is assembling its reactor inside a specialized secure building known as the DOME. Rita Baranwal, Radiant’s chief nuclear officer, confirmed the company is “tracking to get the reactor into DOME and to initiate the testing” by the July 4 deadline. She doesn't expect Radiant's reactor to be critical by then, but anticipates it will be running soon, though “generating electricity” won't happen this summer at the Idaho lab.
Radiant's design radically departs from existing massive reactors. It's significantly smaller, employing nuclear fuel balls filled with uranium grains, which Baranwal likened to “gobstoppers.” She claims these “nuclear gobstoppers” can operate at higher temperatures and are more resistant to melting down. Radiant and other companies plan to utilize this technology to mass-produce smaller, more mobile reactors. Baranwal announced, “We have broken ground on our factory to mass-produce reactors. We’re targeting around 50 per year.” The United States currently operates 96 reactors.
The State's Hand in Deregulation
The Department of Energy actively facilitated this corporate acceleration by rewriting its safety and security standards this year. The department declared the cut regulations “unnecessary,” asserting that safety hasn't been compromised. This revision process involved consultation with the companies themselves, but notably excluded any public input. Furthermore, the new reactors were explicitly exempted from environmental reviews, removing a critical layer of public and ecological protection.
Lyman criticized this approach directly. “Yes, of course, if you bend all the rules, you can do things quickly,” he stated. He cautioned that while test reactors might function, this “should not be confused with anything related to a nuclear power reactor that’s capable of producing electricity in a stable and safe way.” Lyman expressed deep concern that this widespread deregulation will erode essential standards for security and environmental monitoring. This erosion comes precisely as these mass-produced, small reactors are poised to proliferate across the country, posing an unquantified risk to communities.