he U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has voted to issue a construction permit to Kairos Power for the Hermes demonstration molten salt nuclaer reactor to be built at the Heritage Center Industrial Park in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
The Kairos Power FHR (KP-FHR) is a novel advanced reactor technology that leverages TRISO fuel in pebble form combined with a low-pressure fluoride salt coolant. The technology uses an efficient and flexible steam cycle to convert heat from fission into electricity and to complement renewable energy sources
Hermes is the first non-water-cooled reactor to be approved for construction in the U.S. in over 50 years.
In parallel, the NRC is currently reviewing Kairos Power’s construction permit application for Hermes 2, a proposed two-unit demonstration plant that would build on the learnings from Hermes, demonstrating the complete architecture of Kairos Power’s future commercial plants at a reduced scale and supplying electricity to the grid.
The Hermes series will help mitigate technology, licensing, supply chain, and construction risk to achieve cost certainty for Kairos Power’s fluoride salt-cooled, high-temperature reactor (KP-FHR) technology. Lessons learned will be integrated into the company’s future commercial deployments targeted in the early 2030s.
Kairos Power is the recipient of a Department of Energy Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP) award for risk reduction funding to support the development, construction, and commissioning of Hermes in collaboration with its partners: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Idaho National Laboratory, Materion Corporation, and the Electric Power Research Institute.
Kairos Power has also established a cooperative development agreement with the Tennessee Valley Authority to provide defined engineering, operations, and licensing services for Hermes.
Testing Facilities Setup 2018-2021
Kairos Power’s progress is measured in terms of actual hardware. From 2018-2021, Kairos Power established significant testing assets in numerous locations across the U.S.
• The R-Lab (Rapid Analysis, Prototyping, and Iterative Design Laboratory) began operations in September 2018. Collocated with Kairos Power’s Alameda, CA headquarters, the R-Lab has supported numerous surrogate fluid and high-temperature materials tests, including circulating over one million scaled surrogate fuel pebbles.
• The S-Lab (Salt Lab), also collocated in Alameda, was commissioned in mid-2020. It is the first modern testing facility dedicated to performing evaluations in a Flibe environment at temperature.
• The T-Facility (Component Testing Facility), a dedicated 40,000 sq. ft facility for large-scale equipment qualification tests, was recently completed in Albuquerque, NM.
• Also located at the Albuquerque facility, the Engineering Test Unit (ETU) will perform integrated testing of a select set of components in a non-nuclear and unenriched Flibe-wetted environment, supporting design integration, supply chain demonstration, and operations.
• The Albuquerque facility also houses the Pebble Development Lab (PDL), a pebble manufacturing facility focused on producing non-nuclear fuel pebbles for the ETU and future non-nuclear iterations as well as demonstrating the manufacturing processes for Kairos’ unique fuel pebble form.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
Control rods have one job and the millennial geniuses at GE took poison out and the “Ultramarathon HD” of 2023. Results in 30% reduction in shut down margin for a full core of them… calculations of shut down margin assume the control rods have the same worth as the original manufactured equipment…. these don’t. They’re UNSAT.
I think the reactor is likely to turn into a highly radioactive pile of rubble as a result of severe thermal gradients, excessive mechanical stresses, and chemical reactions impacting the integrity of both the fuel spheres and supporting structures.
In the final analysis, seems highly unlikely this will ever be a competitive product.
A license to build an experiment is one thing, a license to operate a commercial facility is something else.
There is a good bit of research studying TRISO fuel particles and salt coolant. That’s something you can do in the absence of isotopes in the salt.
Economically though… yeah.
The TRISO fuel was developed for helium gas reactors. Unclear how well graphite (large part of TRISO fuel) will fare in molten salt. Testing clearly shows limits on graphite’s ability to survive.
Not to mention the graphite is the same density as the fluoride so the pebbles are nearly buoyant, but hey, mechanical engineering is my hard.
Nothing spells economical like introducing an exotic literal halide fluid to a steam plant.
If the doe spending $700 million on this is not gross incompetence, corruption, or some kind of plausible deniability for supporting advanced nuclear, it is the result of some very strong lobbying for MSR hoping that KP-FHR flies because less contamination with the triso. In that case they should just put the work in the lab and disband this facade that Kairos is a commercial entity, when they sell no product or service.
Previous comment about the control rods was meant to follow combinatorics question on bwrx300
The DOE is all about research, not cost competitiveness. Therein lies the fundamental problem. The more research, the more money DOE gets.
Seems to me a proper model is to let companies write-off their development costs with the DOE not involved. If a private firm has their money involved, they will be prudent about product development. If it’s mostly tax payer money, then not so much.
Given China’s track record (refined technology and the construction of, for example, track reactors to power container ships) these measures are long overdue. It looks like China will commercialize the technology faster.
Who cares if China commercializes the next great thing? Nobody’s ever made money with nuclear power The fact that that hasn’texcept for Khris Singh, the guy that runs Holtec, and he made his money selling trash cans for nuclear Fuel and leveraging decommissioning funds.
If I actually develops something worth stealing you don’t think we would steal it and find some way to argue we invented it? The fact that that hasn’t happened and probably won’t, will continue to lend perspective
There are no engineering solutions to ALARA.
It literally means “keep making the thing more expensive until I say stop.”
While ALARA lives, new nuclear energy in the US can’t be cost effective.
Nuclear power plants are staffed with blue collar men and women, not internet keyboard warriors (um scientists) that know better. You should put down the mouse dress-out in PCs and suck up some dose. We need some bodies to go bleed hydraulic fluid through the turbine control valve a second time, because we didn’t get it right last week – you’ll rotate in for for an hour to receive your yearly allotment of dose right before the end of the calendar year.
Thorium is the green answer that will cut the legs off of putler, the oil oligarchs and the criminal oil compnay executives. We better get on board or soon we will be buying our electricity from Canada.
Hermes a test reactor with no power conversion equipment (no steam).
I’m waiting for this one to die… better if a spectacular fail like transatomic rather than going silently like Elysium or just in a decade-long stall like FLIBE.
Kairos is DOE handout to blue ribbon commission crony Percival Peterson, a “TITAN OF NUCLEAR” never employed outside Berkeley in the most antinuclear state
I’d like to take this seriously but it is a wedding between TRISO and salt. I wish the nuclear industry cared about reducing cost more. Supposedly this competes with natural gas but I don’t see any economic figures listed and I have to wonder if it can only compete with natural gas in Germany.
Honestly every reactor seems like the nuclear powered version of SLS. “We have some parts that were made decades ago lets slap them together”. Musk likes to get involved in areas where there is a 10x improvement to be had, nuclear power is definitely one such area.
Elon Musk is great in areas that lack innovation. Unfortunately, the problem with nuclear is the regulatory stranglehold that prevents plants from being constructed or operated at any reasonable cost. We can make great, cheap, reliable nuclear reactors; but not in the current regulatory climate.
Aint no regulatory agency for nuclear power in space.
Atomstroyexpert what do you think about the BWRX-300? Economically Viable?
BWRX300 will probably be built. The output is about half of what Monticello makes in Minnesota. The core isn’t so little that it wastes fuel. I’d rather see ABWR or ESBWR built, but would consider building a handful of BWRX300 in the last 15 years of my career to be a wonderful development. GE has a long legacy, but their edge is dull. For example, shortly after committing to buy 36 of their latest greatest control rods, GE issued a 10CFR21 notice of nonconforming explaining that these new whamodyne control rods have reduced worth (not OEM replacement), and will result in a significant reduction in the ability to shut down the core. You can’t make this stuff up. They probably had some mechanical design guy improve the fatigue life, and did not put the changes through proper nuclear design screening.
But yeah let’s talk about how restrictive the regulations are and how the NRC is the problem.
BWRX300: 49.5 GWd/MTU
ESBWR: 58 GWd/MTU
EPR “Gigachad Core”: 62 GWd/MTU
I am not a nuclear engineer but that doesn’t seem like a show stopper for the BWRX. Economics is king and much of the cost of nuclear comes from the time it takes to get it up and running.
Every current, zirc alloy clad fuel product on the market today has a burnup limit of 62 GWd/MT – look at NUREG-2121.
Advanced cladding with chrome coating or FeCrAl will eventually allow burn-ups in the 70s to take advantage of moving enrichment limits from 5 to 6,7,8%.
If you want to know which core has the highest discharge burn up that would be the largest core and that would be the epr.
If they brought Bellefonte online, it would probably get similarly High burnups because it’s a very large 205 assembly core
The BWRX reactor is not as efficient as its big brothers. Will create more radioactive waste. Unclear how much the unit production costs will be, but will be greater than a large reactor. Building small reactors to match the output of a large reactor is more costly than building just the large reactor.
Also unclear how much the plant will cost as the massive regulatory risk remains and that is the biggest driver behind the high cost of U.S. reactors.
Flibe manufacturing at testing is very important for Commonwealth Fusion Systems’ future plans. They plan to use Flibe to cool their fusion reactor, generate electricity, and breed tritium.