The Nuclear Regulatory Fee (NRC) has wrapped up its remaining security analysis for Kairos Energy’s Hermes 2 “low energy” superior take a look at facility, comprising two 35-MWth take a look at molten salt reactors—much like the Hermes 1 “non-power” demonstration reactor for which the regulatory physique issued a development allow in December 2023.
The NRC’s motion, introduced on July 22, concluded no security elements preclude issuing a development allow for the power. Kairos has proposed to construct Hermes 2 on the East Tennessee Expertise Park Heritage Middle (ETTP) website in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, alongside the proposed single 35-MWth Hermes 1 take a look at reactor, a non-nuclear engineering take a look at unit, and potential future Kairos Energy gasoline fabrication facility. It plans to start working Hermes 2’s two models—a mixed electrical output of 20 MWe—by December 2027, anticipating they’d have a licensed lifetime of 11 years.
The motion marks one other milestone for the Alameda, California–headquartered engineering firm that’s growing and advertising nuclear energy plant designs based mostly on its fluoride salt-cooled, high-temperature reactor (KP-FHR) know-how. The corporate is pursuing a notable “fast iterative growth strategy,” which includes utilizing iterative {hardware} demonstrations and in-house manufacturing “to attain disruptive price discount and supply true price certainty for commercialization.”
A Threat-Averse Speedy Iterative Strategy
For now, Kairo anticipates a KP-FHR industrial reactor may very well be operational within the early 2030s. As POWER has reported, Kairos’s KP-FHR contains a graphite-moderated, “randomly packed” pebble‐mattress reactor with molten fluoride salt coolant (a chemically secure molten fluoride salt combination of 2LiF:BeF2 [Flibe] enriched in Li‐7), working at excessive temperature and close to‐atmospheric strain. The gasoline within the KP-FHR is predicated on tri-structural ISOtropic (TRISO) particle gasoline in pebble kind with a carbonaceous‐matrix coated particle design.
Kairos kicked off the iterative course of with substantial growth of the Engineering Check Unit (ETU), a non-nuclear, unenriched Flibe-wetted and isothermal built-in take a look at at the corporate’s KP-Southwest analysis and growth facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Kairos can also be already producing Flibe for the ETU program at its June 2022–commissioned Molten Salt Purification Plant (MSPP) at specialty supplies firm Materion’s campus in Elmore, Ohio.
On July 1, ETU 1.0 started decommissioning after six months—greater than 2,000 hours—of pumped salt operations. The unit used 12 metric tons of Flibe, reaching 675C at peak with a salt move fee of three,000 gallons per minute. The corporate has additionally made progress to kick off ETU 2.0 in Albuquerque, and ETU 3.0, which might be inbuilt Oak Ridge, subsequent to the Hermes 1 and a couple of. ETU 2.0 and three.0 are slated to exhibit modular development and speed up the corporate’s civil development expertise.
UP-AND-RUNNING: @KairosPower accomplished 1,000 working hours on the biggest FLiBE molten salt system ever constructed.
It will likely be used to tell the design, development, and operation of its Hermes reactor.
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— Workplace of Nuclear Power (@GovNuclear) January 11, 2024
In December 2023, the NRC granted Kairos a development allow for its 35-MWth Hermes molten salt “non-power” demonstration reactor. The NRC’s approval for Hermes 1, notably, marked its first inexperienced gentle for the development of a non-water-cooled reactor in additional than 50 years. The NRC accepted Kairos’ development allow utility for Hermes 1 in November 2021. The corporate is now awaiting a separate approval for an NRC working license earlier than it will possibly start working the Hermes demonstration to adjust to the two-step 10 CFR Half 50 licensing course of. Kairos has informed POWER it’s focusing on mid-2026 as an preliminary commissioning date for Hermes 1.
In June 2023, in the meantime, the NRC formally accepted for evaluation a development allow utility (CPA) for the subsequent iteration, Hermes 2, a two-unit demonstration that may produce “low-power” electrical energy. Hermes 2 is about to be deployed in Oak Ridge on the identical website as the primary Hermes demonstration “to additional de-risk know-how, development, provide chain, and licensing for a multi-reactor plant,” Kairos has mentioned.
Hermes 2 will comprise two 35-MWth take a look at reactors that share a steam-powered (Rankine Cycle) conversion system. “The design builds upon the Hermes 1 take a look at reactor design and incorporates the next three main design adjustments: (1) every take a look at reactor has an intermediate salt loop to switch warmth from the reactor, (2) every intermediate salt loop has a steam superheater that feeds a standard turbine within the shared energy conversion system, and (3) the lifetime of the power is 11 years as an alternative of the 4 yr lifetime of Hermes 1,” Kairos says in its NRC filings. The ability might be licensed beneath 10 CFR Half 50.21 (a category of licenses for medical remedy and analysis and growth services).
“Hermes 2 shares most of the identical security traits of Hermes 1,” Kairos added. “They each use TRISO-fueled pebbles in Flibe, leading to a high-temperature low-pressure system with the next strong inherent or passive security traits: useful containment supplied by TRISO gasoline and Flibe; major warmth transport system that operates close to atmospheric strain; unfavourable reactivity coefficients (gasoline, moderator, and coolant temperature); and reactor vessel and different safety-related elements situated inside a seismically-isolated construction.”
Hermes 2 Anticipated to Start Operation in 2027
For now, Kairos has urged the NRC to evaluation and approve the Hermes 2 CPA by April 2025 to assist the development of safety-related buildings, programs, and elements. “The earliest begin date for development is anticipated to be July 2025; the earliest projected date for completion of development for the primary unit is July 2027, and the newest projected date for completion of the primary unit is December 2027. The completion of development for the second unit is anticipated to be one yr after the primary unit,” the corporate notes.
The NRC on Monday mentioned its Ultimate Security Analysis Report (FSER) for Hermes 2 aligned with findings from the unbiased Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards. The NRC is now anticipated to finish Hermes 2’s remaining environmental evaluation later this summer time as the ultimate part of the licensing course of. “The Fee will decide whether or not the employees’s evaluation helps the findings essential to difficulty the [construction] allow. Following its deliberations, the Fee will vote on whether or not to authorize the employees to difficulty the allow,” it mentioned.
The NRC’s evaluation of the reactor has been notably environment friendly. Andrea Veil, director of the NRC’s Workplace of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, mentioned on Monday that the FSER for Hermes 2 was accomplished “almost 4 months forward of schedule, and utilizing about 60% fewer sources than anticipated, utilizing insights from our earlier Kairos evaluation.”
As POWER reported final yr, the NRC additionally accomplished its FSER for Hermes 1 in 18 months, “nicely forward of schedule.” Veil on Monday mentioned the regulatory physique stays “dedicated to making use of these kinds of classes realized to keep up security whereas promptly and effectively processing functions.”
Kairos on Monday instructed the NRC’s effectivity was largely because of the firm’s foresight. “We’re proud to have partnered with the NRC on an efficient and environment friendly evaluation and are delighted with the employees’s completion almost 4 months forward of schedule,” mentioned Peter Hastings, Kairos Energy vice chairman of Regulatory Affairs and High quality. “Now we have expended an incredible effort to offer all the mandatory info to assist the employees’s findings whereas figuring out alternatives to streamline evaluation processes and demonstrating definitively that superior reactors will be licensed beneath the present regulatory framework.”
Darrell Gardner, senior director of Licensing at Kairos, in the meantime, famous that the corporate’s efforts are nicely aligned with the NRC’s newly up to date course of for streamlining the necessary listening to. “We sit up for persevering with to discern potentialities for added efficiencies. Demonstrating regulatory successes shouldn’t be solely important to advancing Kairos Energy’s mission to allow the clear power transition; additionally it is necessary to bolster the nation’s nuclear power management objectives,” he mentioned.
—Sonal Patel is a POWER senior editor (@sonalcpatel, @POWERmagazine).
