MIT Know-how Assessment launched our listing of 15 Local weather Tech Firms to Watch lower than two months in the past. Since then, awardee Kairos Energy has had three large bulletins about its progress towards constructing next-generation nuclear reactors.
Every of those bits of stories represents an fascinating facet of the method. So let’s dig into the bulletins and what they imply for the place nuclear know-how goes.
First, a fast refresher on Kairos Energy: Whereas nuclear vegetation at the moment overwhelmingly use pressurized water to maintain reactors cool, Kairos is utilizing molten salt. The thought is that these reactors (that are additionally smaller than these sometimes constructed at the moment) will assist generate electrical energy in a means that’s safer and extra environment friendly than standard nuclear energy.
In the case of technique, Kairos is taking small steps towards the last word purpose of full-size energy vegetation. Development started earlier this yr on Hermes, the corporate’s first nuclear take a look at reactor. That facility will generate a small quantity of warmth—about 35 megawatts’ value—to exhibit the know-how.
Final week, the corporate introduced it acquired a development allow for the following iteration of its system, Hermes 2. This plant will share a location with Hermes, and it’ll embrace the infrastructure to remodel warmth to electrical energy. That makes it the primary electricity-producing next-generation nuclear plant to get this approval within the US.
Whereas this information wasn’t an enormous shock (the corporate has been working with the Nuclear Regulatory Fee for years), “any day that you simply’re getting a allow or a license from the NRC is an uncommon and special occasion,” Kairos CEO Mike Laufer advised me in an interview.
The corporate is creating a plan to work on development for each Hermes and Hermes 2 on the similar time, he added. After I requested if Hermes continues to be on monitor to start out up in 2027 (as we reported in our profile of the corporate in October), Laufer stated that’s an “aggressive timeline.”
Whereas development on take a look at reactors is rolling, Kairos is forging forward with industrial offers—in October, it introduced an settlement with Google to construct as much as 500 megawatts’ value of energy vegetation by 2035. Beneath this settlement, Kairos will develop, assemble, and function vegetation and promote electrical energy to the tech large.
