Green light from NRC a major boost for California-based reactor company
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved a construction permit for Kairos Power’s 35-MWt Hermes molten salt “non-power” demonstration reactor, which the firm has proposed to build at the East Tennessee Technology Park Heritage Center site in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
Kairos Power said operation of the plant could begin as early as 2026.
The reactor will be used to inform the development of the company’s fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature reactor (KP-FHR) technology.
NRC commissioners voted to approve Kairos Power’s construction permit application, which was first submitted in September 2021.
The vote comes nearly two months after the NRC held its final review of the application on 19 October, where the company and NRC staff addressed outstanding questions on safety and environmental reports completed earlier this year.
The approval is a major boost for Alameda, California–headquartered Kairos Power, a privately owned nuclear engineering, design, and manufacturing company that says it is “singularly focused” on the commercialisation of its KP-FHR technology.
The entire process took just over two years to complete and included dozens of technical and topical reports which were developed, in part, with support from the US Department of Energy.
Two-Unit Demo Plant Also Planned
Kairos Power will file a separate application for a Hermes operating licence from the NRC in the future.
Kairos Power said the “this efficient review” was possible due to its extensive pre-application engagement with the NRC, which began in 2018 and established open lines of communication between the two organisations.
Peter Hastings, vice-president of regulatory affairs and quality at Kairos Power, said Hermes is the first non-water-cooled reactor to be approved for construction in the US in over 50 years.
“Our successful pre-application engagement and application review have established a solid foundation on which to build,” he said.
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 experiences 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 plants will help mitigate technology, licensing, supply chain, and construction risk to achieve cost certainty for Kairos Power’s KP-FHR technology. Lessons learned will be integrated into the company’s future commercial deployments targeted in the early 2030s.
