Owning our destiny to drive certainty
Vertical integration is central to our strategy to deliver quality advanced reactor systems with cost and schedule certainty. To achieve a commercially competitive product at a predictable cost, Kairos Power is establishing sophisticated manufacturing capabilities.
We produce safety-related components, plant equipment modules, precast concrete structural elements, fuel, and molten salt coolant in-house to drive down costs and mitigate supply chain risk for the commercial fleet.
Vertical integration core infrastructure
As an engineering, manufacturing, and hardware delivery company, Kairos Power has made significant investments in infrastructure and talent. Building robust capabilities in component manufacturing, modular construction, fuel fabrication, and salt production.
01
Hardware manufacturing
In 2020, Kairos Power acquired a 132,000 square foot building in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with 32 acres of land for expansion. There, we have invested in and grown our capabilities to establish our Manufacturing Development Campus with dedicated facilities for reactor component manufacturing, pressure vessel production, and plant equipment modularization. Current capabilities include advanced machining, welding, fabrication, additive manufacturing, and water-jet precision cutting, with more to come.
Our graphite shop utilizes advanced programming and machining techniques to produce graphite reactor components with complex geometries and tight tolerances. We employ laser-scanning technology to match-machine graphite reflector blocks, ensuring precise tolerances are achieved in critical areas for optimal reactor performance.
Our ASME-certified vessel shop produces a variety of large, U-stamped pressure vessels with tight tolerances for Kairos Power hardware demonstrations. We are the only U2 stamp holder in the state of New Mexico, giving us the ability to manufacture ASME BPVC Section VIII Division 1 and Division 2 vessels. The certification is a testament to Kairos Power's robust quality assurance program, which demands superior standards for manufacturing processes, analytical methods, design practices, inspection procedures, and worker training.
02
Modular construction
In 2024, we opened our 30,000 square foot Modular Systems Facility to enable the assembly of modular plant equipment skids and support the construction of major hardware demonstrations in our iterative testing program. This is where we build modules for the Engineering Test Unit series and production facilities, including our TRISO Development Lab, as we progress toward the Hermes demonstration reactor series. Modularization allows us to work on multiple systems simultaneously, reducing construction delays and bottlenecks.
03
Fuel fabrication
We’re developing processes and equipment to manufacture Kairos Power's proprietary annular TRISO pebble fuel form. In the Pebble Development Lab (PDL), engineers have pressed and machined more than 50,000 non-nuclear pebbles, automating processes that will be replicated to mass-produce fuel for future reactors. The fuel fabrication methods optimized in our Albuquerque fuel development labs will be implemented at Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Low-Enriched Fuel Fabrication Facility to produce fuel for the Hermes reactor.
In the TRISO Development Lab our Fuels team is piloting manufacturing methods to produce TRISO—ceramic-coated uranium particles dubbed "the most robust nuclear fuel on Earth" by the U.S. Department of Energy. The early innovation cycles in our developmental fuel facilities will inform large-scale fuel fabrication for the Hermes demonstration reactor program and Kairos Power's commercial fleet.
Kairos Power has begun installing process equipment to make HALEU TRISO fuel pebbles for the Hermes reactor at Los Alamos National Laboratory's Low-Enriched Fuel Fabrication Facility (LEFFF). The LEFFF production line will replicate processes first piloted in our Albuquerque fuel development labs. Kairos Power is the first customer of the LEFFF facility. We expect to begin producing fuel there in 2026 using HALEU from the U.S. Department of Energy.
04
Salt production
Kairos Power's Molten Salt Purification Plant (MSPP) was jointly commissioned in Elmore, Ohio in July 2022 as part of our cooperative development agreement with Materion Corporation—an industry leader in the mining, production, and manufacturing of beryllium-based metals. The Kairos Power-designed plant produces high-purity salt coolant for our Engineering Test Unit series. The first industrial-scale Flibe production facility ever built, MSPP successfully produced 14 metric tons of unenriched Flibe for our first non-nuclear Engineering Test Unit.
In 2024, we broke ground on a new Salt Production Facility at our Manufacturing Development Campus in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The facility will produce enriched, high-purity molten salt coolant for advanced reactors, starting with the Hermes demonstration reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. These capabilities will scale-up industrial reactor-grade Flibe production for the commercial fleet, building on lessons learned from our Molten Salt Purification Plant.
