Overview
- Valar Atomics demonstrated on Wednesday that its Ward250 microreactor produced roughly 100 kilowatts and routed electricity to an Nvidia Blackwell processor to run a web server and a DGX Spark.
- The company and Nvidia announced a formal study of a proposed 30‑megawatt closed‑loop AI data center in Utah that they say would avoid municipal water use by pairing helium cooling with Nvidia’s closed‑loop liquid cooling.
- Ward250 is a high‑temperature gas‑cooled reactor that uses helium as the coolant and TRISO‑coated low‑enriched uranium fuel and converts heat to electricity through a compact generator rather than conventional steam turbines.
- Commercial deployment still requires Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing, expanded TRISO/HALEU fuel production and supply‑chain scaling, and Valar has joined legal challenges about federal licensing authority.
- The test is part of a DOE reactor pilot that pushed several microreactors to criticality by the July 4 deadline and follows large private funding and strong local political support that could speed some projects while raising community and resource questions.