NUCLEAR RESURGENCENuclear Is Here ... and Here and Here
The Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) helped start the nuclear age more than 80 years ago, and it remains at the forefront of nuclear research. The lab is also actively involved in promoting east Tennessee’s nuclear industry and consulting with nuclear businesses that move into the area.
In fall 2020, California-based Kairos Power announced plans to build an advanced nuclear demonstration reactor within the site of the former K-25 uranium enrichment plant in Oak Ridge.
It was a good location for the company. The decommissioned K-25, now named Heritage Center Industrial Park, came with impressive infrastructure, including ample electricity from the Tennessee Valley Authority, abundant water from the nearby Clinch River, and more than 11 miles of rail line connected directly to the Norfolk Southern system. Interstate 40 was less than five miles away.
Perhaps more importantly, the location gave Kairos’ scientists and engineers close access to an unmatched pool of nuclear expertise. ORNL, which helped start the nuclear age more than 80 years ago and remains at the forefront of nuclear research, is all of five miles away. The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, which hosts a prestigious nuclear engineering department dating back to 1957, is just 30 miles down the road. And the federally owned TVA, which has operated nuclear power plants since 1974, is developing its own next-generation nuclear reactor about three miles away.
In particular, though, the company wanted to be near a national lab, according to its cofounder Mike Laufer.
“The big decision for us was where we were going to put the Hermes reactor,” he said. “For that, we pretty quickly narrowed down that we had a strong preference to be in close proximity to a national laboratory, with capabilities that could augment our own infrastructure.”
Hermes will be a 35-megawatt molten salt-cooled reactor that uses a new kind of uranium fuel called TRISO — short for tristructural isotropic particle fuel. The billiard ball-sized TRISO pebbles will consist of uranium, carbon and oxygen particles surrounded by carbon- and ceramic-based materials designed to prevent the release of radioactive fission products. The reactor will not produce electricity; rather, it will demonstrate the company’s technology before Kairos moves on to building much larger commercial reactors.
