Kairos Power

Kairos Power Enabling the world's transition to clean energy while improving people's quality of life and protecting the environment.

06/01/2026

✋Meet the world’s most famous molten salt reactor.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Molten Salt Reactor Experiment achieved criticality on this day in 1965. Its data is still used today and is helping to advance our fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature reactor.

How do you shut down a reactor quickly? By inserting these Reactivity Shutdown Elements into the core. The elements and...
05/29/2026

How do you shut down a reactor quickly?

By inserting these Reactivity Shutdown Elements into the core.

The elements and their drive mechanisms were recently redesigned, manufactured, and tested at our RAPID Lab in Alameda, California.

Evolving from the initial design tested in our first Engineering Test Unit hardware demonstration, the new shutdown elements include neutron-absorbing pellets that stop the fission reaction.

This required our team to custom-build an automated welding solution inside a glovebox to seal the absorber pellets into each element.

(See the link in comments for more on that story).

The shutdown elements also feature an updated pneumatic drive mechanism that retracts and holds the element in place using an electromagnet.

If power is lost, the electromagnet releases its hold on the element and allows gravity to do the rest by rapidly inserting the element into the core.

All four shutdown elements and drive mechanisms were shipped and installed in our second Engineering Test Unit at our Manufacturing Development Campus in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The team is now testing out the insertion of the elements into an empty core which will later be filled with Flibe molten salt coolant and surrogate fuel pebbles as part of our non-nuclear hardware demonstration later this year.

Meet three of the newest members of the Kairos Power remote handling team: Keith, Kyle, and Kevin. These robots are at...
05/27/2026

Meet three of the newest members of the Kairos Power remote handling team: Keith, Kyle, and Kevin.

These robots are at the center of a sophisticated strategy to handle the most delicate and demanding maintenance tasks for our reactors.

The goal is to safely inspect and replace equipment in our reactors from a distance using basic automated tools guided by humans to create a solid foundation for building safer, more reliable, and repeatable service for our customers.

🤖Why robots?

Unlike traditional-light-water reactors, our fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature reactor doesn’t use water for shielding.

Instead, it relies on heavy materials such as concrete to protect personnel from radiation, which limits their access to the reactor.

Our team is developing a system to service reactors from behind the shielding using dedicated consoles that guide robotic maintenance tools with extreme precision.

Each robot can exert up to 50 pounds of force (push, pull, twist) to manipulate components and fasters.

The system is a hybrid of automated tasks (like environment sensing with a CNC touch probe) and human-controlled manual tasks (including tool actuation and coarse movements). The system also uses digital space mapping to locate and apply tools on the first attempt, every time.

This technology is currently being tested at our Manufacturing Development Campus in Albuquerque, New Mexico to validate robotic procedures, train operators, and refine maintenance techniques in environments that mirror our reactors.

By testing these simulated environments, our engineers can:

Develop custom "sensing" methods to train the robots on their environment using touch probes and laser scanners.

Monitor system health much like a modern car with onboard diagnostics to alert us if subtle parameters begin to drift out of bounds.

Master complex spatial navigation to ensure our engineers have a clear understanding of how our robots interact with tools and workpieces in tight, restricted areas.

Validating this automation will ensure rapid, efficient maintenance cycles and maximize plant uptime to safely deliver clean and reliable power.

Take a sneak peek 👀 inside our TRISO Development Lab in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We’re collaborating with BWXT inside t...
05/21/2026

Take a sneak peek 👀 inside our TRISO Development Lab in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

We’re collaborating with BWXT inside this state-of-the-art facility to help test, develop, and optimize systems for commercial TRISO fuel production to supply fuel for our reactors and broader advanced reactor industry. 👇

An off-the-shelf solution didn’t exist to automate the welding of a crucial reactor safety component, so we custom-built...
05/18/2026

An off-the-shelf solution didn’t exist to automate the welding of a crucial reactor safety component, so we custom-built one ourselves 👇

Our advanced reactor features a Reactivity Shutdown System with rods that shut down the reactor when inserted into the core.

The rods contain neutron-absorbing pellets to stop the fission reaction.

The pellets are made of boron carbide material, which cannot be exposed to oxygen or moisture and must be welded in an inert environment to prevent contamination and preserve performance

Our advanced reactor features a Reactivity Shutdown System with rods that shut down the reactor when inserted into the core.

The rods contain neutron-absorbing pellets to stop the fission reaction.

The pellets are made of boron carbide material, which cannot be exposed to oxygen or moisture and must be welded in an inert environment to prevent contamination and preserve performance.

We’re taking a different approach to building our advanced reactors by piloting a seismic isolation system to prevent ea...
05/13/2026

We’re taking a different approach to building our advanced reactors by piloting a seismic isolation system to prevent earthquake ground motion from damaging the reactor building.

Here’s how it works 👇

05/11/2026

🔜 We recently broke ground on our first power-producing reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Hermes 2 is the next step in our iterative approach to technology development and builds off the lessons learned from all our hardware demonstrations and civil construction efforts to date.

The plant will supply up to 50 megawatts of carbon-free power to the Tennessee Valley Authority grid to decarbonize Google data centers in the region.

It will be our first, commercial-scale Gen. IV reactor to deliver electrons to the U.S. grid.

This small ring of dots is ceramic particle fuel that can’t melt in a reactor. Our advanced reactor uses TRISO particl...
05/08/2026

This small ring of dots is ceramic particle fuel that can’t melt in a reactor.

Our advanced reactor uses TRISO particle fuel coated in multiple layers of ceramic and carbon materials that prevent the release of fission products.

Thousands of these particles are embedded in graphite fuel pebbles that float in molten salt coolant inside the reactor core.

The combination of TRISO and salt coolant allows the reactor to operate at low pressure and high temperature to enhance the performance and safety of the system — all at an affordable cost.

05/06/2026

Doubling Up ✌️

This is our dual-head Computer Numerical Control milling machine now operating at our Manufacturing Development Campus in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

We recently brought it online to expand our graphite machining capacity for Kairos Power hardware demonstrations and our future reactor fleet.

We used it to make the first reflector blocks in-house for our second Engineering Test Unit reactor core.

ETU 2 is expected to start operations later this summer in Albuquerque and will help inform the design, build, and operation of our Hermes reactor series in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

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707 W Tower Avenue
Albuquerque, NM
94501

Telephone

510.808.5265

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