📣 Yasir Arafat of INL’s MARVEL to join Aalo Atomics as CTO

October 16th, 2023

Originally posted on Linkedin and Twitter on October 16th 2023.

Big Aalo Atomics news today:
Yasir Arafat is joining as our CTO 🎉

I honestly believe that Yasir will go down as one of the most influential people in nuclear.

Why? Yasir was the project lead behind the MARVEL microreactor. This is a revival of a promising type of reactor that uses liquid-metal as the coolant, marking the dawn of a new era of innovation in nuclear.

And recently, he & the team at INL made US Nuclear history: They received a “90% design complete” seal of approval from the DOE [1]. This is the first such approval since the DOE was formed in 1977.

Aalo Atomics intends to commercialize a scaled up, more economical reactor, inspired by MARVEL. It too will use unpressurized liquid-metal coolant, and fuel that’s commonly used in university campus reactors. This unique combination will result in the same great level of safety as today’s water-based reactors, but will do so even more economically.

Of the ~500+ people in the nuclear industry that I’ve met so far, I can think of nobody better to lead the technical efforts at Aalo, pushing to make nuclear ubiquitous, and showing the world how amazing this energy source really is.

Prior to INL, Yasir led the eVinci microreactor project at Westinghouse, one of the other top advanced reactor programs globally. Yasir has a knack for making impossible-sounding projects a reality. Aalo is honored to have him join the team.

Follow us on LinkedIn @ Aalo Atomics and on X @ AaloAtomics to stay tuned on our progress!
Lots more to come.

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[1] In other words, the reactor design is as complete as it can get, before construction starts. Any final design changes during construction are what count as the last 10%. MARVEL had already been authorized to start procuring/constructing some parts as of this past summer, but design work was ongoing.