Construction of US’ 1st fourth-gen reactor ‘Hermes’ begins

Source: For_All_Humanity

2 Comments

  1. For_All_Humanity on

    It’s *supposed* to come online in 2027 and generate 140MW.

    > According to the data provided by Kairos Power, the KP-FHR reactor is capable of producing 140 MWe output and has a net efficiency of 45%.

    It’s also not exactly cheap, with the US government spending over $300 million on it.

    > The U.S. Department of Energy will invest up to $303 million to support the design, construction, and commissioning of Hermes through its Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program.

    It’ll be interesting to see how this works out. If they can actually bring down the time to construct these it would bring the nuke lobby additional talking points. But if this is faced with delays and cost overruns, which is common, then the already high price will lead to pushback.

    Anyways, cool that science is moving forward at least. Though questions about efficient uses of time and money to confront the climate crisis remain.

  2. Advanced_Ad8002 on

    Molten salt and pebble bed – what could possibly go wrong?!

    Molten salt is infamous for corrosion. Handling that long term is a huge challenge and certainly everything but cheap.

    As to the TRISO fuel pebbles: That has been tried already ages ago, in Germany at the THTR. Turned out, they had orders more broken pebbles than expected.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300

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