Dan Walter
VP of Fission Technology
Dan Walter is Zap Energy’s Vice President of Fission Technology, leading the design and development of the Zap Modular Reactor (ZMR).
Walter is an industry leader and nuclear engineering expert who specializes in initiating first-of-a-kind advanced reactor projects, including high-temperature liquid metal and molten salt systems. Prior to joining Zap, he was director of project delivery for TerraPower’s Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment (MCRE) program. MCRE won a $170M DOE Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP) award in 2021 to design, build, and operate the world's first fast spectrum molten salt reactor. Walter led the project from initiation and into the final design phase, signed contracts for all major equipment, and initiated construction of a full-scale electrically heated test unit. He holds a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering & Radiological Sciences and an M.S.E. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Michigan, and dual B.S. degrees in Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering from Penn State. His graduate work supported the DOE Consortium for the Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL) program with a focus on high-fidelity methods, modeling, and simulation of corrosion deposits on fuel rods.