US small modular reactor (SMR) firm Kairos Power has completed the design, construction, and installation of the reactor vessel for its second non-nuclear Engineering Test Unit (ETU 2.0).
The reactor is the first fabricated in-house at Kairos Power's Manufacturing Development Campus in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Kairos counts search and cloud giant Google among its future customers. The company signed a high-profile agreement last year to purchase 500MW of power across six to seven reactors. The deployment is earmarked for the mid-2030s, and the power will be delivered through a long-term power purchase agreement.
Through the test unit, Kairos aims to demonstrate that its Fluoride Salt-Cooled High-Temperature Reactor (KP-FHR) technology is ready for action. KP-FHR is a Gen IV SMR that promises much higher efficiency through alternative cooling methods, but remains an unproven technology.
According to Kairos, the program's primary objective is to refine its internal manufacturing capabilities and mitigate supply chain risk for the Hermes demonstration reactor series and Kairos commercial fleet. Through ETU 2.0, Kairos hopes to ramp output, advance the production of specialized reactor components, and gain greater proficiency in modular construction methods.
Speaking with DCD, Kairos CEO Mike Laufner provided further context for the company's development strategy: “The traditional nuclear development approach has often skipped steps like smaller-scale demonstrations, but we believe going through these with Hermes provides a clearer understanding of costs and risks.
“Establishing credibility for a new nuclear technology is extremely challenging, and it’s why we’ve chosen a path that relies on iterative hardware demonstrations to reduce uncertainty.”
Following the company's vertical integration strategy, Kairos aims to achieve 80 percent of ETU 2.0 costs derived from raw materials or commercial off-the-shelf parts.
The test unit’s installation also represents a contract milestone under Kairos Power’s Technology Investment Agreement with the US Department of Energy (DOE) for risk reduction funding through the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP).
Under the agreement, Kairos receives fixed, performance-based payments from the DOE upon meeting pre-determined milestones. The DOE will invest up to $303 million in the Hermes reactor project through ARDP.
Last November, Kairos acquired construction permits for its Hermes Two Demonstration Plant at the Heritage Center Industrial Park in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The plant will comprise two 35MW molten salt reactors.
Kairos is one of several SMR firms to sign agreements with data center operators over the past 12 months.
Earlier this month, Deep Fission partnered with Endeavour Energy to co-develop 2GW of nuclear energy to supply Endeavour's global portfolio of data centers, which operate under the Endeavour Edged brand.
Sam Altman-backed Oklo has been the most active player in the market, signing several agreements within the data center sector. In January, the firm inked an MoU with RPower to deploy a power model that combines natural gas and nuclear power for the data center sector.
Before this, it signed a non-binding master power agreement with US data center developer Switch to supply up to 12GW of power through 2044. It also has agreements with Equinix, Prometheus Hyperscale, and two undisclosed data center operators. In total, Oklo has a customer pipeline exceeding 14GW of power.
Finally, in October last year, AWS signed three agreements with Energy Northwest, X-Energy, and Dominion Virginia to support the deployment of more than 600MW of power across Washington and Virginia.
