- Valar Atomics, led by Isaiah Taylor, is trying to revolutionize nuclear energy.
- Valar’s model uses “gigasites” with thousands of advanced reactors to produce nuclear energy.
- Valar says it does not build reactors like they are “artisanal cheese.”
At 16, Isaiah Taylor dropped out of high school. He had ambitions beyond cramming for the SATs and competing with his classmates to get into a top college.
Instead, Taylor managed to land a six-figure job as a coder. He had taught himself coding years before and had built a body of work through freelance jobs and side projects. Eventually, one of his contacts recommended him for a gig building classified technology for the Defense Department.
Yet Taylor, whose great-grandfather worked on the Manhattan Project, was always interested in nuclear power.
Now 25, his biggest venture yet, Valar Atomics, emerged from stealth earlier last week. The company is backed by a team of 35 nuclear experts and $21 million in funding. Taylor says it aims to make nuclear energy more affordable — like SpaceX did for space travel.
The motto: cheaper, faster, better
Valar aims to revamp the way nuclear reactors are deployed and, in turn, solve the problem of scaling them. Typical nuclear power plants can take five years or more to construct. In Valar’s view, that’s akin to building reactors like “artisanal cheese.”
To solve that problem, the company plans to develop what it calls “gigasites,” creating and installing thousands of small, modular, high-temperature gas reactors over time.
Small modular reactors, or SMRs, generally have a maximum output of 300 megawatts compared to large nuclear reactors, which can generate over 1,000 megawatts. Collectively, though, the SMRs at a gigasite could produce thousands of times the energy of a typical nuclear power plant, according to Valar.
“It allows you to produce very cheap energy because all of the complexity is already dealt with on the first couple of reactors,” Taylor said.
Instead of distributing power through the grid — the network that delivers electricity from power plants to homes and businesses —Valar plans to directly supply power to customers that need a lot of it, like data centers, green steel plants, and hydrogen production facilities, by building the sites right next to them.
“ The grid is actually not a very good customer for nuclear energy,” Taylor said. It “needs your reactors to essentially be spread out.”
The rise of the small modular reactor
SMRs have gained momentum as a cheaper, greener, and faster alternative to traditional nuclear reactors. In recent years, a number of SMR companies have emerged with plans to bring their first reactors online in the coming years.
Oklo, backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, is developing small reactors that run on nuclear waste. Oklo aims to deploy its first one in 2027. X-Energy — in which Amazon invested $500 million — aims to bring over 5 gigawatts of power online through SMRs by 2039. Kairos Power also signed an agreement with Google to provide energy from its SMRs, with plans to bring its first reactor online by 2030.
However, critics of SMRs argue that they should not be seen as a silver bullet for the problems that plague traditional reactors.
A 2024 report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis found that SMRs are still “too expensive, too slow to build, and too risky” to meaningfully transition us from fossil fuels in the coming 10 to 15 years.
Researchers have raised concerns about the radioactive waste produced by these reactors. A 2022 study from Stanford and the University of British Columbia found that SMRs generated more radioactive waste by “factors of 2 to 30” than large-scale reactors.
Valar argues that its gigasite model tackles the challenges of cost and speed by enabling it to deploy reactors to achieve economies of scale rapidly. With regard to safety, the company points to its use of tri-structural isotropic particle fuel, a heat-resistant nuclear fuel made from a combination of uranium, carbon, and oxygen. TRISO, as this fuel is more commonly known, generates more nuclear waste, but Valar claims it is “good at encapsulating the nuclear waste,” making it highly resistant to spreading, minimizing environmental impact, and preventing misuse by bad actors.
TRISO is also being tested by Kairos Power and X-Energy, which is building a dedicated fuel fabrication facility.
Fuel and ambition
Despite being a young startup, Valar also has big plans to fuel the world with synthetic fuels that are cheaper than oil.
The company said it has pioneered a process for developing alternative hydrocarbon fuels that can replace the traditional fuel used in aviation, vehicles, and military operations.
It all begins with the company’s reactors, which — once up and running — will generate heat at temperatures exceeding 900 degrees Celsius, or over 1,650 degrees Fahrenheit.
Valar aims to use this heat to power a thermochemical process that splits water into its component atoms: hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen will then be combined with captured carbon dioxide through a collection of chemical reactions to create carbon-neutral synthetic fuels because no new carbon is extracted from the ground.
“ You can sell the hydrogen itself, right, which is a big market, but you can also create, synthetic fuel,” Taylor said. “ We can make jet fuel, diesel, gasoline. We can make all of our hydrocarbons that the world relies on today, and we can make them carbon neutral.”
Valar’s first reactor will launch in the Philippines, where it has secured a research contract for an advanced reactor from the Philippines Nuclear Research Institute. This follows the signing of the 123 Agreement between the United States and the Philippines in 2023, which establishes a framework for enhanced nuclear cooperation between the countries, including technical exchanges, scientific research, and safeguards discussions.
Using a prototype, Valar will simulate its first reactor, Ward One, to test and gather data on its efficacy. Taylor did not specify how long it will take to move through the licensing process and fully get the reactor running in the Philippines but said, “We’re going to move really fast.” Eventually, Taylor wants to bring Valar’s technology to the United States.
The new nuclear era
Taylor believes this is an opportune moment for nuclear energy in the United States as public sentiment has shifted in the past several years.
“Public opinion about nuclear is actually very generational,” he said. “Young people and, and I really mean, honestly, anyone under 50 are very, very pro-nuclear.” Now that they’re in positions of authority, Taylor anticipates that we’ll see “rapid regulatory change.” A 2024 poll of 430 first-generation voters conducted by America in One Room, organized in part by Stanford University, found that four in five supported “new generation” nuclear energy to supplement renewable power sources.
Beyond support from Silicon Valley, which needs more energy for its AI revolution, nuclear energy has seen increased bipartisan support in recent years. In March, the House of Representatives passed the ADVANCE Act, which will expand the use of nuclear energy in the United States and abroad.
Former President Joe Biden also signed a law in March that allocates $100 million to nuclear workforce training programs at universities, two-year colleges, and trade schools. President Donald Trump’s newly appointed head of the Department of Energy, Chris Wright, said last month that “to compete globally, we must expand energy production, including commercial nuclear and liquefied natural gas, and cut the cost of energy for Americans.”
Generational ties
While Taylor remembers discussing the Manhattan Project at the breakfast table with his great-grandmother and grandmother, he never believed his family history gave him carte blanche to enter the nuclear industry.
“I approached the industry as a complete outsider technically, but with the confidence of someone who knew the origins and history from my family’s heritage with it,” he told BI.
After years of research, though, he came to one conclusion: “I found that nuclear had the potential to be the cheapest form of energy on Earth if you build it this specific way: mass manufactured and deployed on gigasites, making highly transportable energy products.”
