New Atomic Age Underway As Three Mini Reactors Go ‘Critical’ By Trump’s July 4 Deadline

“We’ll give some emotional speeches,” says Loszak of himself and his co-founder Yasir Arafat, and share a live video feed of the team loading uranium fuel bundles into the reactor core, then removing control rods to allow fission chain reactions to speed up.

Aalo broke ground on the DOE site in August 2025 with the ambitious plan to achieve “criticality” the state in which a nuclear reactor sustains a stable chain reaction by July 4, 2026. Early on July 2, Aalo’s Arafat, the chief technology officer, conceded in a post on X that they weren't quite to critical yet. “Atoms are splitting, and the core is multiplying neutrons, but we're not critical yet….criticality is a slow and deliberate process. And we are super close to the July 4th deadline.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2026/07/02/new-atomic-age-underway-as-three-mini-reactors-go-critical-by-trumps-july-4-deadline/