Panelists discuss U.S. path to criticality in ANS webinar

The American Nuclear Society recently hosted a panel discussion featuring prominent figures from the nuclear sector who discussed the industry's ongoing push for criticality.

Yasir Arafat, chief technical officer of Aalo Atomics; Jordan Bramble, CEO of Antares Nuclear; and Rita Baranwal, chief nuclear officer of Radiant Industries, participated in the discussion and covered their recent progress in the Department of Energy's Reactor Pilot Program. Nader Satvat, director of nuclear systems design at Kairos Power, gave an update on the company's ongoing demonstration projects taking place outside of the landscape of DOE authorization.

Also included in the discussion were Nicholas Thompson, an engineer at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Brad Tomer, the director of the National Reactor Innovation Center at Idaho National Laboratory, both of whom provided perspectives from the vantage point of the federal government.

Click here to watch their full discussion.

Webinar highlights: ANS CEO Craig Piercy, who moderated the discussion, started things off by framing why conversations like this are important to have at this inflection point in the industry. "For the first time in decades, the U.S. is not just talking about new nuclear, we are actively building toward it. What makes this moment especially interesting is we're seeing more than one pathway to deployment playing out in parallel," he said, referring to both DOE authorization and Nuclear Regulatory Commission frameworks.

These pathways, Piercy emphasized, "are not competing approaches. They are complementary strategies, and together they represent a dual-track model for rebuilding nuclear capability in the United States, and all the while national laboratories are playing a key enabling role, providing expertise, infrastructure, and a proving ground to move advanced reactors toward demonstration."

Each speaker then gave introductory remarks recapping current plans, broader ambitions, and recent updates. In her remarks, Rita Baranwal offered an extended analogy to dispel potential confusion around the varying meanings of criticality. "There are five generally accepted categories of criticality: subcritical, approaching critical, dry criticality, hot criticality, and full power," Baranwal explained, adding that subcriticality is like a parked car, approaching criticality is like beginning to release the brake pedal, dry (or zero-power) criticality is like tapping the gas pedal, hot criticality is like driving the car steadily on a level road, and full power is like driving on the highway.

Piercy's last question, directed at the national laboratories, was what their ongoing role will be after criticalities are achieved and demonstration projects are completed. Brad Tomer responded that "NRIC is here to provide the capability to make life easier for these developers," and that enough reactor developers are "waiting in the wings" to use NRIC resources that the team will be busy with demonstration projects for "at least the next ten years."