Atomic age goes smaller: Austin company unveils next-generation nuclear power plant
AUSTIN (KXAN) — Energy experts gathered in southeast Austin on Monday to discuss the future of the nuclear power industry and the launch of a new modular nuclear reactor.
The event, put on by Aalo Atomics, showcased the company's first nuclear reactor, Aalo Pod, and its new manufacturing space. A video introduction by Gov. Greg Abbott started off the evening, followed by a presentation from industry experts with McKinsey Consulting.
Aalo presented two products. The first is the Aalo Pod, a 50 megawatt electric nuclear power plant 'purpose built for powering AI data centers,' CEO Matt Loszak said.
'The second product is the factory, and the factory is putting out dozens of these Aalo Pod power plants every year, and that's enough to provide a gigawatt per year to these data centers,' Loszak said. He added that 'When you do this all under one roof, it essentially allows you to streamline the whole process and make sure that you can move very fast, very efficiently.'
The Aalo Pods act as modular reactors. They are cooled using liquid metal sodium, as opposed to a traditional water system. Each of the companies' power plants uses five of these reactors to power one turbine.
Federal cuts impact plans to grow Texas grid; advanced energy options face delays
This amount of power is equivalent to about three hundred wind turbines, according to the Department of Energy.
Obtaining this power and keeping it on is essential to the state's plans. Last year, Gov. Abbott announced a focus on expanding two things: nuclear energy and the electric grid. One of the reasons for this push is to supply energy to the growing number of data centers coming to the state.
Transporting oil, natural gas from the Texas Panhandle through the United States
'When you have issues around energy sources (cut) that may fail, nuclear is a way to get around that,' said Mike Blankenship, a Houston-based attorney with Winston and Strawn.
He said that concerns following the 2021 winter storm and the lower reliability of renewables has led many of his clients to see nuclear as the future.
'Right now we're kind of more in the infancy, because it's not completely built out on the modular side,' Blankenship said.
Loszak sees modular reactors as the path forward for the industry. By building all the components to the nuclear power plant in house, he hopes to speed up the industry.
'It usually takes around 10 years to deploy a single gigawatt power plant, but when you do things so repeatable and kind of parallelize the construction and manufacturing of these components, you're able to do a much higher throughput,' Loszak said.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 minutes ago
- Yahoo
C3 AI (AI) Loses 10.8% as CEO Steps Down
We recently published . Inc. (NYSE:AI) is one of the worst-performing stocks on Thursday. C3 AI snapped a two-day rally on Thursday, losing 10.84 percent to close at $26 apiece as investors repositioned portfolios following its chief executive's announcement that he was stepping down from his post. In a statement, Inc. (NYSE:AI) said that CEO Thomas Siebel has tendered his resignation due to health reasons, effective upon a successor assuming his post. 'After being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease in early 2025, I have experienced significant visual impairment,' he said. 'For C3 AI to reach its full potential—which I believe is spectacular—the board and I have initiated a search for a new CEO who can take the company to the next level of growth and success. I will remain fully engaged as Chief Executive Officer of until such time as the board appoints my successor, after which I will continue in the role of Executive Chairman, focusing on strategy, product innovation, strategic partner and customer relationships,' he noted. Meanwhile, an analyst from Wedbush said that the chief's resignation presented an opportunity for other firms to acquire Inc. (NYSE:AI). Wedbush gave Inc. (NYSE:AI) an 'outperform' rating and a price target of $35 apiece. While we acknowledge the potential of AI as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and have limited downside risk. If you are looking for an extremely cheap AI stock that is also a major beneficiary of Trump tariffs and onshoring, see our free report on the .


Newsweek
4 minutes ago
- Newsweek
Donald Trump To Release Billions In Frozen Funds: What To Know
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. More than $5 billion in frozen education grant funding to the states will be released in the coming weeks, according to the Department of Education. The money, which was used to found a range of initiatives including teacher training and English language programs, was suspended by the Trump administration on June 30 pending a review by the federal Office of Management and Budget. Newsweek contacted the Department of Education for comment on Saturday via email outside of regular office hours. The Context The announcement follows weeks of lobbying from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers concerned about the impact the funding suspension would have on their districts. Lawsuits aiming to get the money unfrozen had been submitted by 24 states and the District of Columbia along with a separate group of teaching unions, school districts and parents. What To Know On Friday, the Department of Education spokesperson Madi Biedermann said the funding had been unfrozen and would begin being paid out next week. The money was part of a larger sum of nearly $7 billion that had been approved by Congress for education spending and was due to be released on July 1, but that the Trump administration announced it had placed a block the previous day. On June 30, the Education Department announced the spending was under review with the Office of Management and Budget saying it would investigate whether it had previously been spent supporting a "radical left-wing agenda." President Donald Trump speaks to the media as he arrives at Glasgow Prestwick Airport on July 25, 2025 in Prestwick, Scotland, UK. President Donald Trump speaks to the media as he arrives at Glasgow Prestwick Airport on July 25, 2025 in Prestwick, Scotland, UK. Andrew Harnik/GETTY The money had been earmarked for a number of services including migrant education, English language programs and adult education with $2.2 billion committed to teachers' professional development. On Friday the administration said there would be "guardrails" in place to ensure the released money wasn't spent "in violation of executive orders or administration policy." Earlier this month the Supreme Court ruled the Department of Education can go ahead with its plan to lay off nearly 1,400 workers. The Trump administration reportedly considered abolishing the Department of Education in its entirety earlier this year. What People Are Saying In a post on X, Nebraska House Republican Don Bacon wrote: "Exciting news to announce! All frozen education funding for the upcoming school year have been released." Referring to the payments on Friday at the National Governors Association's summer meeting Education Secretary Linda McMahon said: "I would think now that we've reviewed them … a year from now, we wouldn't find ourselves in the same situation." Addressing The Washington Post Democratic Senator Patty Murray said: "This administration deserves no credit for just barely averting a crisis they themselves set in motion. "You don't thank a burglar for returning your cash after you've spent a month figuring out if you'd have to sell your house to make up the difference." Speaking to Axios Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito said: "The programs are ones that enjoy long-standing, bipartisan support like after-school and summer programs that provide learning and enrichment opportunities for school aged children, which also enables their parents to work and contribute to local economies, and programs to support adult learners working to gain employment skills, earn workforce certifications, or transition into postsecondary education." Skye Perryman, president of the Democracy Forward campaign group, said: "While this development shows that legal and public pressure can make a difference, school districts, parents, and educators should not have to take the administration to court to secure funds for their students." What Happens Next Payments from the frozen funding should start going out next week according to the Department of Education.

Business Insider
4 minutes ago
- Business Insider
I sat in on an AI training session at KPMG. It was almost like being back at journalism school.
I joined an AI training session for KPMG interns at the firm's training center in Florida. The Big Four firm recommended their interns try out five prompting techniques. The session showed me that learning to use AI is more about using language well than tech skills. On a sweaty Monday morning in June, I joined 90 KPMG tax interns in an air-conditioned classroom in Florida. We were there for one reason: to learn how to use AI. We gathered at Lakehouse, KPMG's gleaming training facility in Lake Nona, Florida. I had been invited to spend two days at the facility as part of my ongoing reporting about AI and the consulting industry, and as the class had already started, I slipped in quietly and took a seat. Given that KPMG helps some of the world's biggest companies figure out how to use AI, I was curious to see how the consulting giant was teaching its own employees to use the technology. My biggest takeaway? Upskilling for the AI era can be surprisingly basic. The five ways of asking AI a question Four large screens — two on each wall— hung down from the ceiling in the classroom, and the 90 interns sat around circular tables in groups of six. Sherry Magee, a senior director at KPMG, told me during a tour of the property that the space was designed so there was no "front row of the classroom," which she said encourages participation. The training session was run by two KPMG employees. They opened with a question about the interns' use of AI:"Who just generally goes straight to it and just starts typing?" Pretty much everyone in the room raised a hand. One of the instructors explained that instead of chatting with AI, there were five prompting techniques they could use to adjust the model's response to get the "best, most relevant, and accurate output." The techniques are: They work best for different tasks, the instructors explained. For example, a "chain of thought" prompt can be useful to get AI to show its work. This "thinking aloud" approach is more transparent and can be useful for tax professionals who need to check the results for inaccuracies. "Flipped interaction" prompts could be used in a tax setting to prepare a client profile or to tailor advice. The instructor told the interns that asking AI to prompt them with questions can be helpful for "making you think of things you don't often think of yourself." Echoes from my journalism degree The two-hour training session covered the foundations of KPMG's AI tool for tax, the Digital Gateway. It also explained the concept of AI personas, introduced techniques to reduce hallucinations, and taught the interns KPMG's key ethical principles to apply when using AI. The interns were also taught how to provide AI tools with the right detail and tone for their target audience. I'm no tax expert, but I am a journalist — and what struck me during the session is how much these teachings echoed the ones I was taught in journalism school. The success of an interview hinges on the quality of the questions I ask the other person. As KPMG stressed in its training sessions, by thinking about how you communicate information to an AI, you can also get the most helpful outcome from said AI. "The more detail you give it, the more likely it is to predict the next thing correctly," explained the instructor. The intern training focused on admin-related examples of using AI, like drafting emails or creating slide decks. It wasn't the most complicated or advanced stuff, but the session I attended was for summer interns in the tax division, so I wasn't seeing how the firm's leading technicians tackle AI. More senior employees are using AI for industry research and preliminary audit memos, Becky Sproul, a KPMG audit partner, told me during an interview later that day. They're presenting AI with client documentation, auditing, and accounting standards, and asking it to write "a memo going through all the various attributes of the accounting standard," she said. That preliminary work can help get tax professionals "80% of the way there," Sproul said. The firm is also building AI agents where the "agent almost becomes like a team member," and is using engagement metrics to encourage employees to use AI, she said. The other Big Four firms — Deloitte, EY, and PwC — have also deployed agentic AI platforms this year, which they all present as being transformative for the workforce and productivity. Teaching methods The simple teaching methods used in the session were another reminder that while AI is complicated, learning how to use it doesn't have to be. The interns were learning about technology that is transforming workplaces, but they were still using large cardboard flipboards to share their ideas. The session had one extra reminder for workers in the AI age: Take a break from your screen. At one point, an employee from the Lakehouse's "stretch" team, its on-site gym, ran into the center of the room and announced he was there to lead them through a "wellness break," which entailed five minutes of stretching and breathwork accompanied by relaxing music. The interns stood up with bemused expressions, but soon the whole class was loosening up, which the instructor told them would help them stay focused. "This is what we signed up for, right?" I heard one intern joke as he lunged forward. Choosing to prioritize my reporting over a relaxing stretch, I didn't join in.