Assertion Supported
No accident scenario can heat Kairos coolant enough to fail TRISO fuel
“The fact that the melting temperature for the salt is, you know, in like the 400, like we don't actually can't get the salt hot enough to like stress the fuel in the way that, that you could theoretically stress from other actors. So we don't have any scenario…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Kairos aims to cut reactor capital costs by 50% across seven builds
“We see the ability in, in just those first essentially seven reactors, like dramatically bringing down the capital costs you know, 40, 50% is possible, and then we're staged for the second half of the twenty-thirties to scale from there”
Insight
Nuclear engineers struggle to adapt to iterative development, says Mike Laufer
“If you buy into the iterative process, you don't know what you're going to learn, and so you have to be able to take that information, which sounds simple, but engineers and people, nuclear engineers in particular, like to have everything, like, mapped out, li…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Nuclear competitors are copying Kairos Power's non-nuclear prototyping model
“Now people are finally catching on and say if you build the non-nuclear version of it, you can go much faster, you can learn, you get the information, so others are kind of following along and kind of copying that model, but at the time it was really novel to …”
Assertion Supported
Kairos secured an NRC nuclear construction permit in just over two years
“So fast forward, we got a construction permit from the Aggregatory Commission. First advanced reactor, you know, to submit and get, we did it in just over two years.”
Disclosure
Kairos plans to deliver 500 MW to Google across seven nuclear reactors
“When we look at the 500 megawatt total capacity for Google we're looking at kind of the 50 megawatts, ah, on the Hermes II side, and then we're looking at basically six more reactors to deliver at 75 megawatts each as kind of an evolution of that that initial …”
Insight
Nuclear energy will fail as a baseload solution without cost certainty
“The main challenge with new nuclear is really the cost. It's a two-fold problem. It's not just high cost, it's high cost uncertainty, and we're in a particularly kind of perilous moment where people are recognizing the value of the fixed, reliable, base low po…”
Assertion Supported
TRISO particles replace massive concrete containment structures in Kairos nuclear reactors
“That little particle basically provides, like, all of the functionality of the big concrete structures in the light water reactors that are, you know, the major source of nuclear power today.”
Insight
Rare builds trap nuclear engineers in narrow career development bands
“In the nuclear space in particular, because there's so few build opportunities, there are a lot of people who just have experience in a very narrow band of that development cycle for the technology. And when you just do that one step, like, 20 times, you're mi…”
Assertion Supported
Kairos Power's engineering test unit is the world's largest FLiBe system
“We built the engineering test unit over the course of three years, and built and operated over three years, and that whole life cycle of experience, it's the world's largest FLIBE system. It will be the largest FLIBE system until we load SALT into the second e…”
Insight
Continuous hardware iteration is essential to maintain nuclear manufacturing efficiency
“When you have the overhead or the investment in the manufacturing capabilities, if you just wait for that operation experience, even at smaller timescales, you have a lot of people just sitting around not really doing anything. So, for us, Basically just have …”
What-if
An out-of-tolerance pressure vessel could be fatal to commercial nuclear projects
“If this was The reactor, and the vessel was out of tolerance, you would have a, it could be fatal to the project, depending on what you're looking at, or at least would be a huge delay, because you wouldn't have to just replace the vessel, you'd have to do roo…”
Opinion
Precast concrete could be transformational for advanced nuclear reactor construction
“The opportunity around precast concrete, which is really just, like, potentially completely transformational in terms of how we build these buildings. Totally conventional and a lot of non-nuclear construction, but how do you do this for the nuclear requiremen…”
Disclosure
Google buys clean energy attributes while TVA gets electricity from Kairos
“We have a really exciting announcement that we just had with TVA and Google that, that kind of puts together a novel commercial arrangement around this new evolution of the plant itself, and so it really is kind of a novel structure that allows all three parti…”
Disclosure
Kairos uses non-nuclear test units to screen out unreliable reactor suppliers
“If a supplier could deliver for what we needed for ETU, maybe they could deliver what we need for Hermes. We'd have to test that, or future reactors. But if they couldn't deliver what we needed for the non-nuclear system, there was no way they'd have any chanc…”
Disclosure
Kairos manufactures modular reactor systems on mobile, shippable skids
“Albuquerque is really more around larger scale testing and manufacturing. And across the board for reactor systems, fuel and salt, and all that infrastructure. But what we're building there is mobile. The skids can be shipped. So, you know, future builds are n…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
On-site machining saved Kairos Power's schedule despite a distorted test vessel
“The fact that we had the machining capabilities on site allowed us to process nearly all the blocks with minor modifications to adapt to the as, basically, as-built geometry.”
