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You’re reading Dispatch Energy, a weekly newsletter on energy and climate policy featuring Alex Trembath, Philip Rossetti, Lynne Kiesling, Rory Johnston, and Roger Pielke Jr. To access more Dispatch reporting and analysis, become a member today.
Welcome to Dispatch Energy! While the headlines focus on UFC fights on the White House’s South Lawn and botched renovations of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, the Trump administration is marking America’s upcoming semiquincentennial with a quieter but much more significant milestone: achieving “criticality” with advanced nuclear reactor prototypes.
Last year, the Trump administration created the Reactor Pilot Program, a Department of Energy project to enable the prototyping of next-generation nuclear reactor designs. The administration’s stated goal was to achieve “criticality” with three advanced reactors by July 4, 2026. And in the last month, two reactors authorized under the program—Antares Nuclear’s Mark-0 sodium-cooled microreactor and Valar Atomics’ Ward-250 high-temperature gas reactor—went critical.
