Kairos Power champions iterative approach to new nuclear

Kairos Power began construction on its demonstration reactor in July, the latest step in the company’s iterative approach to new nuclear development.

The Engineering Test Unit (ETU) at Kairos Power’s testing and manufacturing facility in New Mexico (Source: Kairos Power)

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The Hermes Low-Power Demonstration Reactor is the first next-generation reactor to be approved for construction by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the first non-light water reactor to be licensed in over 50 years.

Alongside Hermes - a fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature reactor expected to be operational in 2027 at the Oak Ridge site in Tennessee - civil construction company Barnard will build Kairos Power’s third non-nuclear demonstration Engineering Test Unit (ETU).

The simultaneous construction of ETU 3.0 will help inform Hermes, which will produce only heat, as well as building on supply chain and operational experience, the company says.

Hermes, and then Hermes 2, will support the development of Kairos Power’s 140 MWe advanced reactor, the KP-FHR, expected in the 2030s. 

The commercial demonstration of the KP-FHR will be “as close to 2030 as possible”, according to Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder Mike Laufer.

The Space X approach of making small, rapid steps to improve and hasten the development cycle while relying, as much as possible, on in-house manufacturing, has been an important inspiration in Kairos Power’s own nuclear program, says Laufer.

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“A fundamental component of Kairos Power's development approach … includes the shift from large scale, large cost, slow projects to shrink down to a more rapid, iterative development cycle,” Laufer says.

“The ability to build out full scale, integrated versions of your system, and incorporate that experience and feedback into the design, is something that nuclear has been really unsuccessful at.”

In the very early years of nuclear power, a variety of reactors were tried and tested, but since then the industry has slipped into 20-year, highly capital-intensive, development cycles.

Decades later, the technology is still only just moving to its fourth generation, he says.

“That's an indication that this is a very slow iterative cycle but, also, that experience we've gained should not be disregarded. That operating experience is extremely valuable and something that can't be replicated,” he says.

Performance based

The Department of Energy (DOE) Technology Investment Agreement, signed in February and worth up to $303 million for Kairos Power, also adopts a step-by-step approach with a performance-based, fixed-price milestone strategy that releases payments following demonstrations of project achievements.

Kairos Power has committed to investing at least $100 million to support Hermes’ construction and operation.

The relatively small scale of the Hermes demonstration allows the company to keep costs down while testing what can be achieved as the project moves closer to full commercial operations.

“The value of doing a smaller scale nuclear system is that it reduces the stakes tremendously. (When) you deliver that system, you've completed the full scope of activities that you need to de-risk the commercial technology, or nearly everything, and you've done it faster, and at much lower cost,” says Laufer.

The Kairos Power approach begins with non-nuclear demonstrations, followed by nuclear test reactors, then non-nuclear commercial demonstrations, and finally, a commercial nuclear reactor.

Kairos Power's Path to Commercialization

(Click to expand) 

Source: Kairos Power

This approach helps increase stakeholder confidence in the design, regulatory, manufacturing, and construction process, says Nuclear Innovation Alliance (NIA) Research Director Patrick White.

“That drives down the risk, so that when you're spending those larger amounts of money on your final commercial product, you've got really high assurance, because you've essentially done it all before,” White says.

The company has been fortunate to coincide with NRC efforts to streamline its regulatory processes. The regulator completed its final safety evaluation for the Hermes 2 advanced test facility in late July, four months ahead of schedule and at around two thirds the expected cost.

Hermes 2 will be built alongside Hermes 1 and the ETU 3.0 facilities and will be a low-power, two-unit advanced test facility with a combined electrical capacity of 20 MWe.

Kairos Power hopes to have the Hermes 2 test molten salt reactors operating by the end of 2027.

Shifting challenges

The challenges facing the global energy markets have shifted since the company began. 

Originally, the Kairos Power project completion was meant to coincide with the gradual decommissioning of hundreds of gigawatts of natural gas-powered plants across the United States which have expanded in recent years on the back of cheap fuel.

“Looking at the wave of when natural gas plants were built and deployed, it was clear there was a very tight window where we built out a lot of natural gas capacity. What happens at the end of those plants’ lives is a really interesting opportunity, presuming that you have something better,” says Laufer.

Since the company began, however, timelines have accelerated.

The United States aims to as much as triple nuclear capacity in the next two and a half decades, decarbonization goals have been brought forward and, after years of little-to-no growth in electricity demand, there has been a sudden jump in expectations on the back of increased electric vehicle usage and power-hungry data centers.  

This change has caught many in the industry off guard, but Laufer believe Kairos Power is well positioned to meet the challenge.

“The only thing that has changed is the increased sense of urgency to be ready to scale up sooner,” he says.

“I would make the case that we're moving faster than many in the field, if not the fastest. The demand signal is there, it's pulling us, and there are not many alternatives available right now.”

By Paul Day