Valar Atomics Selected for the President’s Accelerated Nuclear Program

We are honored to announce that Valar Atomics has been selected by the U.S. Department of Energy to achieve criticality on American soil by July 4th, 2026, pursuant to Executive Order 14301. We extend our gratitude to President Trump and Secretary Wright for their leadership in advancing America’s nuclear energy capabilities.

This selection represents a pivotal moment in America’s nuclear renaissance. Under the framework of Executive Order 14301, we are part of a coordinated national effort to restore American dominance in nuclear technology; a dominance we once held unchallenged, but gradually ceded over decades of regulatory stagnation and underinvestment.

A New Manhattan Project

Today marks the beginning of what we consider America’s second Manhattan Project. Unlike the original effort focused on national defense, this initiative harnesses atomic energy for civilian power generation, artificial intelligence infrastructure, and industrial revitalization. The mission requires the same dedication, urgency, and innovative spirit that characterized our nation’s greatest scientific achievements.

The parallels are striking and intentional. Just as the original Manhattan Project mobilized America’s scientific and industrial might to solve an existential challenge, today’s nuclear renaissance addresses equally fundamental threats to our national security and economic prosperity. The energy race of the 21st century will determine which nations lead in artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, and the technologies that define modern civilization.

Where once America pioneered every major branch of reactor architecture—gas reactors, pressurized water reactors, molten salt reactors, and sodium reactors—we allowed bureaucratic obstacles and regulatory overreach to stifle the technology we created. May’s orders correct this historical misstep by restoring the Department of Energy to its original mission as a testbed for nuclear innovation, led by Energy Secretary Wright. This transformation enables companies like Valar Atomics to build, test, and iterate rapidly on breakthrough technologies.

Meeting America’s Energy Challenge

For four decades, the United States has underinvested in domestic energy production while exporting energy-intensive industries overseas. This strategic error has left us vulnerable precisely when energy demand is accelerating at unprecedented rates. Now, as we work to reshore critical manufacturing and compete in the energy-demanding field of artificial intelligence, we face power requirements that dwarf anything in our industrial history.

The scale of this challenge cannot be overstated. Training a single large language model can consume as much electricity as a small city. Advanced manufacturing requires constant, reliable power measured in gigawatts. The industrial processes needed to compete with China in critical materials and manufacturing are extraordinarily energy-intensive. Meanwhile, our existing grid infrastructure, much of it built decades ago, strains even under current demands.

Renewable sources cannot meet these baseload demands with the reliability and density required. While extremely valuable assets which also should be allowed to grow, natural gas and coal lack the speed and fundamental economics needed to counter China. Only nuclear power offers the combination of low cost, rapid timeline, and operational reliability necessary to power America’s technological and industrial renaissance.

For the first time in decades, nuclear energy is being treated as what it truly is: a strategic national asset essential to our prosperity, security, and global influence.

Positioned for Success

Valar Atomics is uniquely equipped to address this national priority due to deliberate strategic choices made over the past year. With a small but talented team, we have focused our efforts on building a modular reactor with domestic supply chains and taking it through rigorous testing. Our WardZero prototype in Los Angeles has now undergone five months of heat and pressure testing and has already been through two maintenance outages, each one teaching us the critical lessons we need to learn in order to scale.

It is our belief that this hardware-first, rapid, and incremental approach to building is the strategy that will yield a scalable product which can solve America’s energy crisis.

Our high-temperature reactor design delivers additional advantages crucial to America’s energy future. Operating temperatures above 750°C enables not just electricity generation, but also direct process heat applications for industrial manufacturing, hydrogen production, and materials processing. This versatility transforms nuclear from a power source into a comprehensive industrial platform.

Our organization is built around the principle that technological leadership comes from building and testing, not from perfecting designs on paper. In our first year, we have moved from concept to hardware implementation faster than any other team since the early days of nuclear. This bias toward action positions us perfectly for the accelerated timeline demanded by the President’s July 4th, 2026 mandate.

A Golden Age of Nuclear Energy

We are confident that this administration possesses both the capability and commitment to restore America’s position as the global leader in nuclear technology. The recent executive orders represent the most comprehensive nuclear policy reform in decades, addressing everything from export licensing to workforce development to fuel supply chains.

For the first time in decades, American nuclear policy is guided by a principle of dominance rather than merely non-proliferation. While preventing weapons proliferation remains important, the new strategy recognizes that global nuclear leadership requires building well and often, both domestically and internationally. China and Russia have gained ground precisely because they focused on deployment while America focused on restrictions.

Executive Order 14301 restores the natural relationship between innovation and regulation. Companies with ideas and capital will develop and test new technologies, while regulatory bodies establish sensible guardrails around proven systems. This approach—regulation following innovation rather than preceding it—enabled America’s original nuclear leadership and will restore it again.

The economic implications are staggering. A revitalized nuclear industry will establish America as the preferred supplier of energy infrastructure globally. Nuclear projects represent deep relationships worth billions of dollars, creating sustained economic influence. Every reactor we export strengthens American technological leadership while building markets for American expertise, fuel, and components.

Moving Forward

Our team is working continuously to complete testing on our WardZero system and prepare our test facility in Utah at the San Rafael Energy Research Center in Emery County. We are grateful for the partnership of Governor Cox and his administration, who understand that state-level support for nuclear innovation directly translates to economic development and energy security.

The target project is our proof-of-concept reactor design which incorporates TRISO fuel in a high-temperature configuration optimized for both safety and rapid manufacturing. Testing at our Utah facility will validate the core technologies while providing operational data essential for future iterations. Under the new regulatory framework, this testing can proceed without the multi-year licensing delays that have historically plagued nuclear innovation.

July 4th, 2026 deadline is ambitious but achievable. It reflects the urgency this administration brings to restoring American energy leadership and the confidence they place in American technological capability. The path ahead is challenging, but it is this magnitude of challenge that Valar Atomics was made for: to help secure America’s energy independence and technological leadership for generations to come.

This is America’s nuclear renaissance. We are honored to be part of it.