Our Manufacturing Thoughts and Plans

Disrupting Nuclear Energy Deployments through Factory Manufacturing

By Yasir Arafat & Wheeler Gibson

At the dawn of the 1900s, automobiles were the realm of the wealthy—a hand-built work of art crafted by skilled artisans. Because every component was custom and each vehicle required painstaking labor, costs were high, and production was limited.

Then along came Henry Ford, who turned this idea on its head with a groundbreaking concept: the moving assembly line. Debuting at his Highland Park plant in 1913, Ford’s system standardized parts and divided the assembly process into specialized tasks. Assembly times for the Model T plummeted from 12 hours to just 93 minutes, slashing costs and putting car ownership within reach for the average American.

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Fast forward to today, and the nuclear industry is poised for a similarly transformative leap. Nuclear reactors have traditionally been “hand-built,” each one a massive and highly customized project that can drag on for years at great expense. Take the Vogtle Units 3 & 4 in Georgia, which took 15 years to build and cost $36.8 billion, more than twice the projected timeline and cost. Look at Hinkley Point C—an ambitious endeavor demonstrating how large and complex these projects can be.

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Rethinking Reactor Production
At Aalo Atomics, we see parallels with the old automobile days. While many Small Modular Reactor (SMR) vendors and microreactor developers aim to cut costs by adopting factory-based fabrication, they are currently busy developing the minimum viable product (MVP),  without genuinely optimizing for mass production. That’s a missed opportunity: failing to design for efficient manufacturing can bake in hidden costs and complications down the line.

At Aalo Atomics, our philosophy is that designing for manufacturing and assembly (DFMA) must go hand-in-hand with designing for safety and functionality. Therefore, we pursue two MVPs simultaneously—the reactor and the factory. This dual development ensures that what we learn about manufacturing feeds back into the reactor design, reducing costs before they’re locked in.

Why Aren’t Reactors Mass-Produced Yet?
Well, for starters, conventional reactors are enormous. Each one typically includes about 100 systems plus extensive civil structures. Over the decades, nuclear technology favored ever-larger designs to minimize neutron leakage, consolidate staffing, and harness “economies of scale.” That, in turn, meant massive pumps, heat exchangers, and reactors built in highly specialized (and expensive) facilities. Because orders are infrequent and components so big, the time and cost to build them skyrocket.

Therefore, we see flat or negative learning curves with conventional, large-scale plants. Nuclear construction timelines can span well over a decade—Vogtle Units 3 and 4, for example, took roughly 15 years from approval to completion. Very few people see a project from start to finish; those who do are unlikely to work on the next one. That means most individuals on the team never get a “second time” to improve upon the process. Because there’s no continuous repetition, the opportunity to learn and refine processes is lost.

This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as a negative learning curve: when key people leave mid-project—often due to the sheer length and complexity of construction—replacing them becomes highly inefficient and “lossy.” On top of that, a 15-year timeline may encompass regulatory shifts, changing requirements, and other disruptions that force costly rework. The cumulative effect is a process that doesn’t necessarily improve with each new build.

Yes, SMRs are smaller than conventional plants and intended to curb these challenges, but they’re often scaled-down versions of the same approach. They still involve extensive civil works and can require more concrete and steel per megawatt than their larger cousins. Simply downsizing doesn’t necessarily deliver the cost or speed benefits we need.

The Mass-Production Mindset
We believe the real breakthrough comes not from making a big reactor somewhat smaller but from reimagining how reactors are fundamentally manufactured—treating them like cars, data centers, or microchips, where standardized parts can be quickly churned out in large numbers. That’s why increasing throughput (a principle akin to SpaceX’s “Rule #4”) is so critical. If you can cycle through projects more quickly—producing more units in less time—you spread fixed costs over more units and learn from each iteration. This rapid feedback loop is vital for any complex manufacturing effort seeking both cost reduction and consistent quality.

Over the last year, we recruited experts from automotive, aerospace, and turbine manufacturing and then built a digital model of the Aalo-1 reactor assembly process. We tracked 15,000 parts and 120,000 assembly steps. That deep dive revealed our biggest cost drivers for the Aalo-1 reactor, and once we applied design-for-manufacturability principles, we estimated a 40% cost reduction.

Ultimately, we are not content with digital models but rather prefer learning from doing. We are building full-scale prototype systems to validate the models and learning how to build them right. This is not possible for companies building larger systems. These companies cannot afford to build full-scale prototypes iteratively, so they must perform extensive engineering work up front before they build a design they can trust. On the other hand, we are learning from our hardware and rapidly tweaking our designs.

Additionally, our manufacturing thesis forces us to use readily available materials and well-understood fabrication processes. This allows us to focus on production rather than invention. This way, we have a cost-effective design that works by the time we need to split the atom.

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We are not just focused on mass-manufacturing the reactor, but the majority of the modules making up the Aalo-Pod, including the civil structure. This is key to rapid and predictable on-site delivery.

With our reference design, a detailed factory layout, and specifications for machines, equipment, conveyors, and assembly stations —we decided to do what few in the nuclear world have tried: build an actual reactor factory.

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That’s precisely what we are doing, and we started establishing our first factory in a 40,000 sqft facility in Austin, Texas. That’s a bold plan, but our facility already buzzes with activity, and we are learning at light speed. The goal is to eventually produce dozens of reactors annually and one day scale into the hundreds. We’re setting up assembly lines, developing custom jigs, and digitizing the process for consistency, quality, and speed.

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While building a reactor is hard, scaling its production is 10X harder. So, we decided to tackle this endeavor systematically and iteratively.

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Our Three-Phase Plan is as follows: 

1.     Phase I: Minimum Viable Factory (Q1 2025)

• Prove we can build an Aalo-1 reactor under our roof. We’ll iterate with multiple prototypes until we get it right.

2.     Phase II: Implement NQA-1

• Ensure we fully comply with nuclear quality assurance standards. DOE and NRC audits will validate our work.

3.     Phase III: Maximize Throughput

• Ramp up to mass-manufacturing Aalo-1 reactors. We aim to transform our pilot factory into a high-output production line.

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Once we’ve proven success at scale, we’ll launch more “gigafactories,” each capable of building 100+ reactors every year—equivalent to one gigawatt (GW) of reactor capacity. Meanwhile, the pilot line will continue producing over 30 reactors per year, helping to meet the near-term demand for Aalo Pods.

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A Shift as Big as the Assembly Line
Scaling up production of multiple smaller advanced reactors (vs. large reactors) poses its own challenges, from fuel performance and licensing to refueling and maintenance. We’ll tackle those questions in future posts. For now, though, we see ourselves standing at the cusp of a “second atomic age,” mirroring Henry Ford's impact on personal transportation. By placing factory manufacturing at the heart of nuclear reactor production, we aim to democratize access to safe, clean energy—just as Ford’s assembly line brought the automobile into everyday life.

We are learning as fast as we can. Stay tuned as we continue sharing our progress, challenges, and breakthroughs in mass manufacturing nuclear reactors. We’re excited to build the future—one assembly line at a time.