Meet the only US company building an advanced reactor
Kairos Power is the only company in the country actively building a small modular nuclear reactor.
The California startup got there while taking a moonshot approach, betting on two commercially unproven technologies at once: modular design and nonwater cooling. The experimental reactor it is building in Tennessee uses molten fluoride salt as a coolant — a Generation IV technology so far commercially untested.
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The company is constructing two demonstration reactors in Tennessee. Hermes will test their design’s most basic mechanics, with Hermes 2 incorporating electricity generation and other systems. With construction permits from the NRC for both, Kairos has already begun pouring concrete and welding rebar at the site.
As of July, Hermes is the only SMR under construction in North America, according to the World Nuclear Association.
Nuclear Power Startups Are Heating up in Southern California
What if you could deliver a megawatt of energy anywhere in the world a cargo container could be shipped? For an El Segundo-based company, this sci-fi-sounding dream may be much more “next Tuesday” than “next planet.”
Radiant, a startup that is repackaging and refining traditional nuclear technology into a portable microreactor, is on the home stretch to development and testing of its prototype reactor...
Westinghouse plans to build 10 large nuclear reactors in U.S.
Westinghouse plans to build 10 large nuclear reactors in the U.S. with construction to begin by 2030, interim CEO Dan Sumner told President Donald Trump at a roundtable in Pittsburgh on Tuesday.
Westinghouse’s big AP1000 reactor generates enough electricity to power more than 750,000 homes, according to the company. Building 10 of these reactors would drive $75 billion of economic value across the U.S. and $6 billion in Pennsylvania, Sumner said.
Mothballed nuclear plant on brink of revival
In October, Palisades nuclear generating station is expected to become the country’s first commercial reactor to reopen after fully shutting down. The milestone comes amid a resurgence in public support for nuclear power and state and federal leaders’ readiness to financially back the projects.
DOE Opens Door to Private-Sector Demonstrations at MARVEL Nuclear Microreactor Test Bed
By Sonal Patel
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is inviting private-sector nuclear developers to submit proposals for experiments and demonstrations using its Microreactor Application Research Validation and Evaluation (MARVEL) project. The first-of-its-kind operational test bed for advanced microreactor technologies is now 90% through its final design phase, with key components already under fabrication.
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