Mike Laufer is the co-founder and CEO of Kairos Power, discussing the cultural challenges of introducing iterative development into the nuclear industry.
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”
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…”