Nuclear Energy and Artificial Intelligence Unite: Aalo and Crusoe Partnership
Nuclear energy company Aalo Atomics and energy-priority artificial intelligence infrastructure company Crusoe have formed a strategic partnership to develop a nuclear-powered "Artificial Intelligence Factory" data center at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL).
The companies announced on July 30 that under the commercial partnership, Aalo will initially launch the Crusoe Spark modular data center at INL in 2027, which will serve as a proof of concept. In their long-term plans, Aalo and Crusoe aim to deploy Aalo Pods and Aalo's 50-MWe extra-modular reactor (XMR) power plants in Crusoe data centers by the end of 2029.
This partnership comes as Aalo transitions to the next phase of its campaign at INL, revealing the company has a specific data center partner. As previously reported by POWER magazine, Aalo's Critical Test Reactor (CTR) reached criticality at INL on July 4, marking the fourth DOE-licensed advanced reactor to reach criticality in about a month. The CTR is a zero-power physics reactor built to validate core physics, control behavior, instrumentation, and operating procedures.
Aalo has begun constructing its second reactor, "Project Ascension," at INL, which is a 10-MWe commercial-scale system that will generate electricity to power a data center. The company noted that the Project Ascension unit is being built alongside the CTR, and the knowledge gained from both projects will influence the final commercial Aalo Pod design, particularly in terms of affordability and ease of mass production.
Aalo is following a staged development model. The CTR will test the fueled core, graphite, control rods, instrumentation, fuel loading, and operating procedures at near-zero power. Aalo is also building Aalo-0, a full-scale, non-nuclear sodium test system, which will circulate 60,000 pounds of sodium under operating conditions to validate heat transfer and power conversion systems. The data from these campaigns will feed into Aalo-X and subsequently prove out the company's planned 30-MWth/10-MWe sodium-cooled demonstration plant, the Aalo-1 reactor.
In 2025, Aalo introduced the Aalo Pod, a 50-MWe XMR designed specifically for data centers. The company's concept creates 50-MW modular blocks by linking five 10-MWe Aalo-1 reactors to a shared turbine, which can be scaled up for larger campuses. Aalo notes that the Pod is designed specifically for data centers, has a compact footprint, limited water requirements, and is compatible with conventional data center electrical equipment.
Source: POWER Magazine