BRYAN, Texas (KBTX) - A pilot nuclear reactor at Texas A&M's RELLIS campus is just months away from a major milestone, according to the company building it.

Last Energy hosted a community open house Thursday night, giving the community an inside look at its progress on the PWR-5, a small-scale test reactor the company has been building at RELLIS since breaking ground in January."In the next couple of months, we intend to get final authorization from the Department of Energy... to reach that first critical reaction," said Adam Lenarz, Last Energy's Vice President of Development.

Reaching "criticality" means the reactor achieves a sustained nuclear reaction, the first real test of whether the project works as designed.