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Those are the people that would sell your soul to the devil.
Growing from a broad research effort at U.S. universities and national laboratories, Kairos Power was founded to accelerate the development of an innovative nuclear technology ...
Kairos Power is focused on reducing technical risk through a novel approach to test iteration often lacking in the nuclear space. Our schedule is driven by the goal of a U.S. demonstration plant before 2030 and a rapid deployment thereafter. The challenge is great, but so too is the opportunity.
So basically academics finding people to fund a large scale lab experiment, they want to get working by 2030. It sounds like they sold Google on an idea (for funding) and now have to move their idea from the lab to the real world. It does sound safer than water cooled plants of old at least.
These are the small, buried reactors right? The ones that we tested on paper but haven't gotten NRC/DOE to sign off on?
I know they are MSRs but still...
This is good news, relatively speaking.
SMR technology is one of the most promising pieces of technological development in the nuclear power space.
Standardized factory production and completely sealed, so refueling is only at the factory, never on-site. Their also, small, but scalable depending on the needs of each site.
I'm not sure of the design this company is using, but I'm assuming they're leveraging a fail safe reactor, as in, it requires properly running systems to generate fission, but if those systems fail, the fission process stops. There are no secondary systems that have to kick in, it's a simple as either it's running properly, or it can't run it all.
As opposed to systems like Chernobyl, or 3 Mile Island, that required separate active safety systems to guard against catastrophic failures. But if those failed, they're backups failed, etc., well, meltdown.
This makes it sounds like Google is building their own nuclear plants
Nope, they have a partner that's doing that and the partner is going to be providing small modular reactors. Although we are not sure according to the article whether Google is going to be running them directly to their data centers or whether they are going to be providing energy to homes and buying renewable energy credits or something. Either way, small modular reactors should bring down the price of nuclear.
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What could go wrong?
They will suddenly stop supporting them after a few years
Emergency shutdown link hidden behind UI menu after UI menu and constantly changing locations weekly.
So um. What happens when the white supremacists attacking FEMA and electrical grids starts attacking these nuclear reactors?
There are already existing nuclear reactors. Why would these new ones be any different in regards to their ability to be attacked?
Privately owned, smaller, more locations, more news coverage
I guess I expect the national energy commission to still regulate the plant to ensure safety standards are the same between public and private.
Glad they're choosing nano-nukes and supplying their own juice.
this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
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