For the first time in more than 50 years the US granted permission for a new type of nuclear reactor, a sign regulators are becoming more open to different approaches to producing power from splitting the atom.
California start-up Kairos Power received a construction permit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to build its Hermes demonstration reactor in Tennessee, US. While commercial reactors in use today are cooled by water, the Kairos technology uses molten fluoride salt as a coolant.
There’s growing global interest in accelerating deployment of nuclear power as a key part of the fight to rein in climate change, but that effort has been hampered by a regulatory process that has been slow to approve new designs.
“It’s possible to license things that are different with the NRC,” Mike Laufer, the Kaiross CEO, said in an interview on Wednesday. The regulatory process “doesn’t have to be a roadblock”.
Kairos is among many companies seeking to commercialise designs that can be built in factories and installed on site, an approach that’s expected to be faster and cheaper than the large conventional reactors widely used today.
