Kairos Power

Oak Ridge, Tennessee is the epicenter of American nuclear innovation, and Kairos Power is proud to be at the heart of it. Through vertical integration and our iterative development approach, we're working hard every day to deliver safe and reliable reactors with greater schedule and cost certainty. Thanks to Paul Solman and the PBS News Hour crew for highlighting our progress as we continue to build Hermes — the only U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission-permitted advanced reactor project currently under nuclear construction in the U.S.

That’s a wrap! Kairos Power successfully sealed the top head of the Engineering Test Unit 2 reactor vessel. This is the first completed reactor vessel manufactured and assembled in-house at our Manufacturing Development Campus in Albuquerque. ETU 2 is a non-nuclear, reactor-scale prototype of Hermes 1. It's the first fully integrated modular design built by Kairos Power that will inform the design, operation, and construction of our commercial fleet.

Kairos Power advanced reactors are designed for online refueling, meaning fuel can be added and removed from the core without shutting down. This reduces maintenance outages and increases availability. Our Pebble Extraction Machine (PEM) is a key piece to that puzzle and a sophisticated assembly getting staged for installation in our second Engineering Test Unit. The PEM acts as the "gatekeeper" for the fuel handling system, picking out pebbles one by one at a controlled rate to downstream systems for inspection and processing. It has to perform this task flawlessly while submerged in a 650°C molten-salt environment, where precision and reliability are paramount. The ETU 2 PEM recently passed a 100,000-pebble circulation test without a single jam! By proving the system in ETU 2, we'll gain new operating experience that will feed directly into the Hermes PEM design, enabling further optimization for our commercial reactor fleet.

⚾ Batter Up: Kairos Power and Major League Baseball (MLB) take similar approaches to developing talent and technology. Get up to speed on our minor league farm system 👇

CERAWeek continues in Houston as our CEO and Co-founder Mike Laufer joined Google's Lucia Tian and other industry leaders to discuss how advanced nuclear could meet surging AI data center demand. Mike highlighted our landmark deal with Google to provide up 500 MW of new capacity by 2035. This aligns well with our iterative approach to technology development to deliver our plants on schedule and with greater cost certainty. We'll be breaking ground soon on Hermes 2, which is the first reactor to be delivered under the agreement.

We’re building the foundation for industrial-scale Flibe production in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Crews are progressing to the next phase of foundation work at the future site of our Salt Production Facility located at our Manufacturing Development Campus. The facility will produce enriched, high-purity molten salt coolant for Kairos Power’s advanced reactors, starting with the Hermes series before scaling-up production for our commercial fleet. Foundation work is expected to wrap up over the summer before moving to the next phase of construction. The project is receiving supplemental support through economic incentives from the City of Albuquerque and State of New Mexico as well as the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program.

CERAWeek is underway in Houston! This morning, Kairos Power Co-founder Edward Blandford wrapped a session on industrializing nuclear delivery. With construction accounting for roughly 60% of a traditional plant's total cost, we're taking a different approach to reduce capital costs and achieve greater cost certainty. Through vertical integration and our iterative testing and learning cycles, we are establishing supply chains and gaining proficiency in building a standardized, modular design that can be deployed at scale using accelerated construction methods and advanced manufacturing.

One way to increase construction speed and reduce the cost of building new reactor technologies is by leveraging modular construction using precast concrete. We recently built and tested this 26-foot-tall shielding structure using prefabricated concrete elements at our Reactor Demonstration Campus in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Precast construction is widely used to quickly build tunnels, bridges, and other civil infrastructure. The modular elements were assembled on-site to behave like conventional cast-in-place structures. They were connected using multiple joint designs that were evaluated to better understand their impact on shielding performance. Initial results show the structure performed as expected and will inform the design, construction, and operation of future Kairos Power projects to: ✅ Improve quality control 📉 Reduce construction timelines ❌ Limit complex on-site work with greater cost certainty.

NUCLEAR 101: The Kairos Power fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature reactor combines proven molten salt and pebble bed reactor technologies to efficiently deliver heat at more than 1,200°F. Here’s how it works: ➡️Fission generates heat inside the TRISO pebble fuel. ➡️Flibe molten salt coolant efficiently transfers that heat to an intermediate salt loop ➡️The salt loop heats water to steam ➡️The steam spins a turbine to produce clean electricity.