OAK RIDGE, Tenn. (WATE) — After years of planning, Kairos Power broke ground on the Hermes 2 Demonstration Plant in Oak Ridge on Friday. It is the first commercial-scale reactor and the first power-producing Generation IV reactor to receive a U.S. construction permit.
The Tennessee Valley Authority shared that, once completed, the plant is expected to generate up to 50 megawatts for the TVA power system, powering Google’s data centers in Tennessee and Alabama. The plant is being built on the footprint of the former Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant at the K-33 site in the Heritage Center Industrial Park in Oak Ridge. The Hermes reactor design uses molten fluoride salt coolant along with a specialty fuel to generate power.
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“Kairos Power was incorporated in 2016. We’re a reactor developer. We’re developing what we call our fluoride, salt-cooled, high-temperature reactor. You know, the technology has its strong roots, actually, here in Oak Ridge. Historically, there was the Molten salt reactor experiment that ran successfully here in the mid 1960s, and we’re really building off of that legacy,” said Ed Blanford, chief technology officer at Kairos Power.
The plant is also next to the Hermes Low-Power Demonstration Reactor (Hermes 1), which will produce heat but not energy. The Hermes 1 is expected to begin operations in 2028, shared Ashley Lewis, director of marketing and communications, Kairos Power, and Hermes 2 will build on the lessons learned from the demonstration reactor. Blanford explained that this coolant, along with the project being “small and modular,” allows them to move quickly.
“[Going smaller] allows us to look into opportunities to scale up that technology and do it a bit uniquely. We also use a different fuel form and a different coolant than you might see in reactors that operate today. That gives us a unique safety case that allows us to operate at high temperatures, so we get better efficiency out of the plant, but do it in a safe fashion,” said Blanford.
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The TVA expects one reactor at Hermes 2 to begin operating in 2030, with the company adding further capacity by 2035. The TVA is the first U.S. utility to sign an agreement to buy electricity from a Gen IV reactor, a spokesperson said…