Technology

The article mentions Kairos Power but doesn't mention that their reactors in development are molten-salt cooled. While they'll still use Uranium, its a great step in the right direction for safer nuclear power.

If development continues on this path with thorium molten-salt fueled and cooled reactors, we could see safe and commercially viable nuclear (thorium) energy within our lifetimes.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-06/china-building-thorium-nuclear-power-station-gobi/104304468

To my layman's knowledge, using thorium molten-salt instead of uranium means the reactor can be designed in a way where it can't melt down like Chernobyl or Fukushima.

Edit: The other implication of not using uranium is that the leftover material is harder to make in to bombs, so the technology around molten-salt thorium reactors could be spread to current non-nuclear states to meet their energy needs and reduce reliance on coal plants around the planet.

So not replacing current energy, but adding onto it. Just like how we didn't replace fossil fuels with the solar and wind unprecedented advancements the last 30 years but only added more energy consumption on top of that...cool

I'll be amazed if this ever comes to fruition.

Generally speaking renewables + storage are the cheapest way of generating non-polluting power. After that there's nuclear power and it's much, much more expensive:

After that, and even more expensive are SMRs. Also, they don't actually exist yet as a means of generating power.

From the article, "For example, it has already received the green light from the U.S. Nuclear Registry Commission (the first one to do so) to build its Hermes non-powered demonstrator reactor in Tennessee. Although it still doesn’t have nuclear fuel on-site, this is a major step in its design process, allowing the company to see its system in real life and learn more about its deployment and operation."

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.

Will energy prices become negative when the AI bubble bursts?

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...