Powering the mission: How Scaled Atomics found its home in Oak Ridge
The story of Scaled Atomics is one of connection and Tennesseans working together to get a company where it needs to be.
Richard “Astro” Lawson is president and co-founder of Scaled Atomics. The company looks to develop an MN-350, a dual-use, mobile nuclear microreactor designed to primarily provide on-demand power to critical missions across the U.S. Military and beyond.
Ask him how he and Scaled Atomics ended up in East Tennessee, and you’re in for quite a story.
From Illinois to the Marines
Lawson grew up in a farm town west of Chicago. A self-described “nerd”, he enrolled at Purdue University as an aerospace engineer at the age of 15 and joined their Navy ROTC the week of his 16th birthday. Two years later, he was accepted to the U.S. Naval Academy in Maryland, where he spent four more years before being commissioned.
That set him on a 28-year Marine Corps career built around flying and testing aircraft, including deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq right after 9/11. His experience earned him the callsign “Astro” and eventually the role of the Corps’ chief test pilot.
Headed West
As a test pilot, Lawson was mostly stationed out West. He spent time at places like Stanford University exploring technology transfer between labs and industry. He also became involved with Hacking for Defense, a university program that develops and commercializes technologies for national security.
He had a front-row seat to the Bay Area’s dot-com boom and became very familiar with the startup communities in main innovation hubs. After retiring from the Marines, he graduated from Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program and spent a year consulting for a large global biotech firm.
Then, everything changed.
Turning South
When Lawson’s oldest daughter began looking at colleges, she wanted to see what life outside of the west coast was all about. As for her parents, they wanted to be within reach.
A visit to Middle Tennessee left Lawson and his wife unexpectedly hooked. Within days, they’d sold their house and set off to build their home in Tennessee while their daughter landed at Miami University in Ohio.
Settling into Tennessee
Once in Middle Tennessee, Chris Moran, a friend at Lockheed Martin Ventures, connected him to the Vanderbilt University endowment team to launch a national security investment effort. Lawson quickly leaned in and became involved in their Wond’ry and Center for Technology Transfer and Commercialization. While on campus, he reconnected with Naval Academy classmate Brian Erickson and former grad school colleague Aron Buckles.
“It just opened up this whole Tennessee world. Turns out Vanderbilt’s been investing for a long time, turns out they’re not bad at it, and turns out they had just started their Institute of National Security,” he explained.
From there, connections compounded: Nashville native Morgan Miller, fintech trailblazer and investor Joe Maxwell, veteran-focused investor Paul Woolard, Senator Hagerty‘s office, Governor Lee’s team and fellow Marines Fletcher Tidwell, Ed Magee and Sean Park.
“I knew seven people in the area before we moved and am related to five of them. Moving here was a pure family play. I was so amazed at how one connection led to another,” Lawson said. “Tennessee has a do-things culture. It’s not a pontificate-on-things culture. Coming from the military, that resonates.”
Basing in Oak Ridge
Before all of this, Lawson and his wife welcomed a baby boy, and he became a new dad all over again. When his son started asking what dad did for work, Lawson wanted an answer as concrete as the one his daughter grew up with during his military service.
Chris Pehrson, a former military and business colleague, was forming a small nuclear-focused startup in Virginia and reached out to Lawson at the perfect time. Pehrson was inbound to visit Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and they met up a few weeks later.
“It’s 7:15 am on a Friday, and I walk into the ETEC meeting. It’s the most purposefully aligned crowd I had been around since I left the military,” he said. “Government, industry, and academia joined to solve hard, modern-day problems. I get this room. These are my people.”
That sealed it. Lawson agreed to join the company on one condition: it had to be based in Oak Ridge. Three months later, they began raising their first capital together.
Scaled Atomics is focused on unlocking the capabilities of next-generation military systems that demand heavy power in energy-scarce environments. Today, delivering that power means fuel convoys and global supply lines, putting troops at constant risk.
The MN-350 will eliminate that dependency, delivering reliable power from a single 20-foot container that can move with the military anywhere, hence the tagline “Powering the Mission.” It will fit within existing military shipping, air and sea logistics, a goal the military has pursued since the Army Nuclear Power Program in 1954.
Planting strong roots
In just under a year, Scaled Atomics has stitched together partnerships across the state, mirroring Lawson’s own instinct to just meet people and connect.
They’ve pitched at “Innovation Night at the Park.”
They have signed a master research agreement with the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, an NDA with the Y-12 National Security Complex and a fuel offtake agreement with Standard Nuclear.
They are in the pipeline for the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy Launch Pad program with ORNL as a partner and were just accepted into the University of Tennessee Research Park Spark Accelerator.
This all comes as they prepare for a Series A raise and continue on the path to prototyping the MN-350.
And the best part: Lawson’s six-year-old son now has a desk right alongside his, just like his sister did. When someone asks what his dad does, he has an answer — he’s powering the mission.
Follow Scaled Atomics on LinkedIn.
Like what you've read?
Forward to a friend!