Kairos Power taps Samsung C&T for Google reactor in deal worth up to $100M
Kairos Power has picked Samsung C&T to help build a 50 MW reactor for Google, a deal worth up to $100 million and targeting operation by 2030.
Kairos is among a wave of nuclear startups that have benefited from the surge in power demand from AI data centers. Google first signed a deal with Kairos in fall 2024, calling on the company to build nuclear reactors capable of generating about half a gigawatt of electricity by 2035.
Kairos is currently building two reactors in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The first, Hermes 1, is a low-power demonstrator that will help the company refine its commercial design. The second, Hermes 2, is Kairos's first commercial-scale reactor. Output from Hermes will count as the first 50 megawatts of its deal with Google.
The startup received approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build the reactors in November 2024. It expects Hermes 2 to begin operating in 2030, in line with its original agreement with Google.
Hermes 2 will be a fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature reactor, a design that has been floated for years but never built at commercial scale. Fluoride salts have high boiling points, which will help keep pressure levels low. That, in turn, will limit the risk of high-pressure blowouts in case of any parts failures. Kairos is also using a relatively new form of nuclear fuel known as TRISO, which encapsulates tiny seeds of uranium fuel in layers of ceramic and carbon, which are then loaded into billiard ball-sized spheres. The arrangement is intended to prevent meltdowns.
The startup has about five years to get its first power plant up and running, which is an accelerated but manageable timeline in the nuclear industry. To fulfill the terms of its deal with Google, Kairos will need to move even faster on subsequent reactors, something Samsung C&T might be able to help with.