Kairos Power has successfully completed 1,000 hours of pumped salt operations with its non-nuclear Engineering Testing Unit (ETU) at the company’s testing and manufacturing facility in Albuquerque, N.M. This achievement arrives on the heels of operators loading 12 metric tons of a molten fluoride salt coolant known as “Flibe” into ETU, making it the largest Flibe system ever built.
The largest FLiBe molten salt system ever built and will be used to inform the design, construction, and operation of Hermes—a low-power reactor that the company is using to advance the development of its KP-FHR.
The ETU is a non-nuclear prototype at the same scale as Hermes. It’s being used to demonstrate key systems, structures, and components, test the supply chain, and gain operational experience that will be integrated into future iterations on the company’s path to commercializing KP-FHR technology.
The team recently loaded FLiBe (a mixture of lithium and beryllium fluoride salts) into the unit to begin operation of the ETU.
DOE will provide up to $303 million to Kairos Power using a performance-based, fixed-price milestone approach. Kairos Power will receive fixed payments upon demonstrating the achievement of significant project milestones.
What’s Next?
Kairos Power plans to operate the ETU for about five months before decommissioning the unit and constructing a second iteration, ETU 2.0.
The company plans to build a third iteration in Oak Ridge in 2024 to lay the groundwork for Hermes operations starting in 2026.
Kairos Power is working to commercialize a 140 megawatt-electric high-temperature molten salt reactor that leverages robust TRISO fuel to deliver clean, firm energy that complements renewable power sources at a cost competitive with natural gas.
The KP-FHR commercial reactor could be operational in the early 2030s.
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One thing about Elon I never understood was his fixation on Mars. Our moon is so close, bursting w/raw materials (including water!). Once we’re established there, we can go any were in the solar system. Oh so much easier…
They should stage a few spills since it isn’t radio active, just to see what happens. And maybe add a florescent dye to the salt to make it fluoresce when illuminated with special flashlights or lasers to make spills easier to spot.
OK, stupid question: What’s the advantage of using molton salts if it’s not created as a result of a nuclear reaction? OK, solar thermal and other high heat inducing technologies make sense only if you want to re-invent the wheel. Buy why bother, when we have “wheels”, and they roll just fine…?
A standard reactor uses uranium and only burns 2% of the solid fuel pellets. A molten salt reactor can burn Thorium and other nuclear waste in addition to Uranium. They can burn over 90% of the fuel leaving only maybe 2% unburnt and less transuranic waste.
I’d like to see an Adams Atomic Engines style heavy nitrogen cooled, direct turbine cycle reactor. With Moltex Energy’s fuel salt in tubes approach rather than TRISO pebbles. Also use the Yttrium Hydride moderator recently developed at Oak Ridge.
Rod Adam’s makes a decent case for using aeroderivative turbine based gas coolant reactors, but the balance of plant for conventional gas coolant reactors is harsh. Supercritical CO2 coolant makes for a much more compact form factor if you have the temperatures to drive it. The fuel salt in tubes idea kinda reminds me of both the calandira in CANDU reactors, and water tube boilers.
Supercritical CO2 has a number of thermodynamic and practical considerations that have yet to be fully resolved after over 50 years of trying. The fluid is not a magical solution for power production.
Using nitrogen in a reactor system requires high pressures when used with a turbine. That, coupled with high temperatures make the reactor vessels essentially impractical to fabricate- the walls end up being too thick.
Helium is a better fit, but even with the lower pressure, practical reactor vessels are still a problem.
OK, I can see your point. But again, what is the point beyond a science experiment that make this a practical engineering project? It’s not a matter of just being able to “make things happen”. It’s the ability to do that on an economic scale. And that’s the “disconnect” were it’s so hard to connect the dots. It’s much less “can we do this”, then getting people who usually are clueless about what we’re talking about, who are those who need to put up the money to do “whatever” And that’s just the way “it” works.
15N is 0.37% of the natural isotopic mix. While it wouldn’t be impossible to enrich the 15N to high levels, the utility of using even 15N doesn’t have a convincing case. Like, just because we could? We should? Nah. At least you realize N2 is an unworkable choice in a thermal reactor. Bravo for that.
Napkin writing. NRC and others write 1 MW may power from 400-800 homes (no industrial?). 140MW~400 = 50,000 homes (need batteries for peak). Would take many of them to make a dent in the electric needs with Tesla and such coming online. Or would they be larger? Many smaller would be distributed, requiring more workers to monitor. Very few weapons could be made, too.
My street cred as a nuclear internet troll is on the line here with this dumbarse hodgepodge reactor. There may be enough influence at Oak Ridge to relive their molten salt days that this pebble bed might on a fast track like the olden days, when fools were behind things like fission powered aviation. The cronyism is so strong with this one that they have like $700M DOE match IIRC, for a test reactor.
Long-term, every bone in my body knows this design isn’t competitive… although I’ve resigned myself to the possibility that I may have underestimated the will here. I’m unsure why it’s not just a doe test reactor instead of having this farce construct of ‘commercial entity’ with no market penetration for nuclear services or products…
Nothing wrong with a dissenting voice. It’s good to be skeptical about new developments, try to pick them apart.
Certainly there are added costs with the fluoride salt approach; the high melting point of the salt necessitates freeze protection and more expensive insulation, beryllium handling adds some costs, more remote maintenance costs. And the TRISO fuel and the higher alloy construction of the primary loop is expensive.
On the other hand there’s a ton of cost savings too: much higher thermal efficiency, lower cost containment, passive decay heat removal. Not having to deal with hydrogen and high pressure steam saves a lot of costs.
The real problem though is how things are done in the nuclear industry, not so much what the primary coolant is or the fuel form. If that isn’t fixed nuclear power will continue to be a declining industry in N. America, Europe and Japan.
So, 40% thermal efficiency makes 99.999% enriched lithium FLiBe, and TRISO pebbles balance lifetime costs at 100MWe scale? Because Per Peterson says so? No, the KP FHR is a holdover from the Obama administration and is some weird pork monster. Per Peterson was on Obama’s “Blue Ribbon Commission on the Future of Nuclear Energy” with Monez, the former secretary of Energy that looks like the quaker oats guy. I sincerely believe the KP FHR will never see a commercial plant. They might, just might be able to build Hermes because some people at ORNL want to play with molten salt, and the only compromise available to them is to keep the fuel locked up in the TRISO graphite compacts (pebbles). Reasonable people still have the keys and will never allow fluid fuel.
They must use alot of nickel electroless plating to resist the corrosion.
Nickel plating helps to reduce the initial attack. However, the FLiBe salt is not very corrosive to even the common 304 or 316 stainless steels. There is a slow dissolution of chromium from the alloy. It can be brought down to almost zero by adjusting the redox of the salt, and by appropriate salt purification in conjunction with inert cover gas. There is no stress corrosion or flow assisted corrosion like with water.
Does FLiBe attack ceramic? I would think there was some sort of ceramic that could be used. I always wondered why they wouldn’t make a wall of overlapping ceramic tiles surrounded by steel that resist corrosion. The ceramic would cut the heat to the steel, and the steel would hold the ceramic in place. If they can line steel with ceramics to make commodity steel, then surely they could do the same for a few power plants.
Just one note… there is a proper capitalization of FLiBe remembering that there are 3 main elements involved F, Li and Be … fluorine, lithium and beryllium. FLiBe. Not flibe or Flibe. Not even FLIBE, tho’ in science circles, that’s tolerable.
And also to note, this is NOT (yet, ever?) a reactor. Its a tub of FLiBe salts, heated to the molten point, and pumped all over the place through all nature of valves, pumps, conduits, pipes, diverters, mixers, chillers, heaters, and so on, to SIMULATE a nuclear molten salt reactor.
Still, its good to see that the primary engineering research not only has been and is being done, but that it appears to be largely as trouble-free as its innovators projected.
It sure would be nice to see an actuall FLiBe cooled molten-salt reactor running — if even only at a level low enough just to keep it molten — you know?
⋅-⋅-⋅ Just saying, ⋅-⋅-⋅
⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅
It is a test reactor minus the radioactive elements. Better than nothing and a good way to test some of the real world engineering. I recall that they were going to add Cesium, Xenon and other fission byproduct elements (that are not the radioactive isotopes). Still no Uranium or Plutonium in the salt so it isn’t perfect.
Still the pace is very slow. I feel like I will retire on the Moon before one of these is working. I wish that Elon would buy somebody and test on the Moon to speed things up.
Yah, baby…