Kairos Power and the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have entered into a $27 million partnership to focus on accelerating advanced nuclear technology.
“DOE’s support has been instrumental in helping Kairos Power accelerate our path to technological maturity,” Ed Blandford, Kairos chief technology officer and co-founder, said in ONRL’s Feb. 19 press release. “By collaborating with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, we gain access to decades of expertise and a unique set of capabilities that we couldn’t find anywhere else.
Under the partnership terms, ORNL will work with Kairos and allow access to specialized facilities to evaluate the company’s novel salt-cooled high-temperature reactor. Kairos’s reactor will use tri-structural isotropic (TRISO) fuel for its reactor.
The national lab will also manufacture components for reactor development and testing and analyze the performance of coated particle fuel, according to the release.
DOE and Kairos have been collaborating on advancing new nuclear technology for years. This project marks the fourth partnership between ORNL and Kairos since 2020, according to the release.
According to the release, DOE is investing $303 million of risk reduction funding in Kairos’s Hermes demonstration reactors under its Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program to mature the company’s molten salt reactor design.
Kairos is currently building its Hermes demonstration reactor in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Hermes is a scaled demonstration of Kairos’s fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature reactor technology. The test reactor, which was issued a construction permit by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in 2023, will produce 35 megawatts thermal and will not produce electricity, according to its NRC application.