Mike Laufer
Data verified as of Aug 31, 2026
Kairos Power is commercializing its fluoride salt-cooled, high-temperature reactor (KP-FHR), which combines TRISO pebble fuel with FLiBe coolant in a compact, low-pressure design. The company runs an iterative, vertically integrated development model centered on Hermes 1, a 35 MWth demonstration reactor under safety-related construction in Oak Ridge, and Hermes 2, an electricity-producing demonstration plant for the TVA grid. In April 2026 Kairos broke ground on Hermes 2 - the first deployment under its Google-backed fleet plan totaling up to 500 MWe by 2035 - while a May 2026 NRC amendment extended Hermes 1's construction-completion deadline to April 2029 (Kairos now expects to finish building the test reactor in 2028). Kairos operates two ISO 9001:2015-certified sites (Alameda and Albuquerque) as it scales toward serial reactor-hardware production, and Hermes 2 is targeted to deliver first grid power around 2030. The company is also building out its fuel and materials supply chain, including a February 2026 five-year, $27M partnership with Oak Ridge National Laboratory and being named the first customer for BWXT's $500M TRISO fuel plant in Wyoming, which in July 2026 laid out a phased schedule toward full commercial production by 2031. In August 2026 Kairos also launched NuCAMP, a 12-month manufacturing-methods and workforce-training partnership with Oak Ridge National Laboratory and regional universities and colleges at its Oak Ridge campus.
Company OverviewRead the long-form profile of Kairos Power
35 MWth low-power demonstration reactor validating Kairos Power's KP-FHR design, construction methods, fuel program, and operating approach in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
Construction permit granted in December 2023 and nuclear safety-related construction began in May 2025. In May 2026 the NRC extended the construction-completion deadline by 28 months to April 30, 2029 after first-of-a-kind site and design delays; Kairos now expects to finish building the reactor in 2028, pushing operation past the original 2027 target. As of late August 2026 no further NRC schedule action has been taken and no operating license application has yet been filed for Hermes 1.
Commercial-scale demonstration plant that extends the Hermes learning loop into electricity production for the TVA grid and Google-backed demand.
NRC construction permits were issued in November 2024 and Kairos broke ground on the plant on April 17, 2026 - the first deployment under its Google-backed fleet plan. Kairos has re-envisioned Hermes 2 as a single-reactor, up-to-50 MWe plant scheduled to begin operations around 2030.
Kairos Power's modular commercial reactor platform for grid, data center, and industrial users, designed around paired 75 MWe units that scale into larger multi-unit plants.
Commercial fleet architecture is now anchored by Kairos Power's Google agreement, with first deployment targeted for around 2030 and additional projects through 2035.
Produce HALEU TRISO fuel for Hermes 1
Using DOE-allocated HALEU and Los Alamos National Laboratory's LEFFF capability to manufacture the first fuel pebbles needed for Hermes 1 startup and operation. As of late August 2026 Kairos has finished installing process equipment at LEFFF and is commissioning the pilot line with depleted uranium before introducing HALEU; no fuel pebbles for Hermes 1 have been reported produced yet.
Completing construction, fuel loading, and startup of the Hermes 1 low-power demonstration reactor in Oak Ridge to validate Kairos Power's reactor, fuel, and operating model. After a May 2026 permit amendment, Kairos expects to finish building Hermes 1 in 2028, with the NRC construction-completion deadline now set at April 30, 2029.
Development stage - Hermes 1 safety-related construction began in May 2025, Hermes 2 broke ground in April 2026, and first grid power under the TVA agreement is targeted for 2030. After a May 2026 NRC permit amendment, Kairos now expects to finish building the Hermes 1 test reactor in 2028 (construction-completion deadline April 30, 2029). Kairos has no operating reactors yet. As of August 2026 the company continues to build out its fuel and materials supply chain, including a February 2026 five-year, $27M ORNL partnership and being named BWXT's first customer for a $500M TRISO fuel plant in Wyoming - in July 2026 BWXT laid out a phased schedule for its Pronghorn Industrial Park (Gillette) site, targeting startup in 2030 and full commercial production in 2031. On August 18, 2026 Kairos also launched NuCAMP, a 12-month manufacturing-methods and workforce-training partnership at its Oak Ridge Reactor Demonstration Campus.
DOE Milestone Contract Support
Performance-based ARDP support of up to $303M for the design, construction, and commissioning of Hermes and related risk-reduction work.
Future Power Purchase Agreements
Kairos plans to sell energy, ancillary services, and environmental attributes under PPAs tied to its Google agreement to develop, build, and operate up to 500 MW of advanced reactors by 2035 (first plant online around 2030), beginning with Hermes 2 delivering up to 50 MW to the TVA grid.
Employees
500+
On February 19, 2026, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Kairos Power announce a five-year, $27M partnership - the fourth ORNL-Kairos collaboration since 2020. ORNL will test and evaluate reactor technology, manufacture components, and assess TRISO pebble fuel performance under operating-relevant conditions, reinforcing the fuel and materials science underpinning the Hermes program.
BWXT discloses Kairos Power as the first customer and partner for its proposed $500M TRISO fuel fabrication facility at Pronghorn Industrial Park near Gillette, Wyoming, backed by a $100M Wyoming state grant and targeting full production by 2031. The plant would manufacture fresh TRISO fuel only (no waste handling) and builds on the companies' September 2025 TRISO manufacturing collaboration, adding a long-term domestic fuel-supply option beyond the Los Alamos-based pebbles used for Hermes 1.
Kairos Power and supplier Ibiden Co., Ltd. complete a three-year qualification program for ET-10 graphite, machining and destructively testing roughly 3,000 specimens to the ASME Section III, Division 5 (HHA-III-4100) standard for reflector blocks and internal structural components used across the Hermes reactor series - reportedly the first graphite grade qualified under that code for high-temperature reactor components.
The NRC approves Kairos Power's request to extend the latest date for completing Hermes 1 construction by 28 months, from December 31, 2026 to April 30, 2029. Kairos cited first-of-a-kind site-prep and design work - including removing legacy structures from the test-reactor footprint in coordination with the DOE - and now expects to finish building the Hermes test reactor in 2028.
On June 3, 2026 Kairos Power announced that its Alameda, California manufacturing facility passed an ISO 9001:2015 quality-management audit with zero findings, becoming the company's second ISO-certified site alongside its Manufacturing Development Campus in Albuquerque. The certification formalizes standardized quality processes as Kairos scales toward serial reactor-hardware production for Hermes and the Google-backed fleet.
On July 16, 2026 Kairos Power completes verification and validation of KP-BISON, its fuel performance code modeling how TRISO fuel particles behave and retain integrity in a high-temperature, salt-cooled reactor. The team validated the code against real-world AGR-2 irradiation experiment data from DOE's Advanced Gas Reactor program using the same UCO fuel specification as Kairos's fuel. Co-founder and CTO Ed Blandford called it the first set of TRISO safety codes to reach this milestone in the U.S., and the first ever for a salt-cooled reactor application; Kairos will use the resulting reports to support its NRC fuel safety case for future reactor licensing.
On August 18, 2026 Kairos Power launches the Nuclear Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Precast (NuCAMP), a 12-month collaboration at its Oak Ridge Reactor Demonstration Campus to advance nuclear manufacturing and construction methods (precast concrete, large-format and wire-arc additive manufacturing, electron beam welding) and to train workers for the buildout. Partners include Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the University of Tennessee-Knoxville's Tickle College of Engineering, the Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation, Barnard Construction, and two community colleges, with Samsung C&T Engineering & Construction Group and Cambridge Vacuum Engineering advising; the program also proposes two new master's degree tracks plus welder, production-technician, and K-12 training pathways.
In July 2026 BWXT confirms its Pronghorn Industrial Park site near Gillette, Wyoming for the proposed $500M TRISO fuel plant for which Kairos Power is the first named customer, and lays out a phased schedule: finish permitting in 2027, break ground in 2028, start up the facility in 2030, and reach full commercial TRISO production in 2031. This adds a long-term domestic fuel-supply option for the Hermes program beyond the Los Alamos-based pebbles used for Hermes 1.
In July 2025 Kairos installs the 14-foot-tall reactor vessel for its third Engineering Test Unit (ETU 3.0) on its Oak Ridge campus, adjacent to the Hermes sites. The vessel was fabricated in the UK with Cambridge Vacuum Engineering and the University of Sheffield's Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre using electron-beam welding, and the ETU 3.0 building - a test bed for streamlined nuclear construction methods - is being erected around it, with construction targeted for completion in summer 2026.
Launches its iterative Engineering Test Unit (ETU) program - full-scale, electrically heated, non-nuclear prototypes of the Hermes reactor used to validate salt-coolant technology, integration, and construction methods. ETU 1.0 went on to log more than 2,000 hours of pumped-salt operations and produced the company's first high-purity FLiBe coolant.
Aalo Atomics
Nuclear Fission
Aalo Atomics is an Austin-based nuclear startup founded in 2023 by CEO Matt Loszak and CTO Yasir Arafat (former lead of INL's MARVEL microreactor) to mass-manufacture sodium-cooled reactors purpose-built for AI data centers. Its product line pairs the factory-built 10 MWe Aalo-1 reactor with the Aalo Pod, a 50 MWe 'extra modular' plant that clusters five reactors and is designed to install in months. Selected for the DOE's Reactor Pilot Program in August 2025, Aalo brought its Aalo-X Critical Test Reactor at Idaho National Laboratory to first criticality on July 4, 2026 - the fourth DOE-authorized advanced reactor to meet Executive Order 14301's deadline, less than eight months after groundbreaking. The company has raised over $300 million, including a $100M Series B led by Valor Equity Partners, and was negotiating a roughly $500M Series C at a $4-5B valuation as of mid-2026 to help fund the planned one-million-square-foot 'GigaWatt Factory' beyond its 40,000 sq ft Austin pilot plant, which it said in July 2026 would expand tenfold to 400,000 sq ft within a year while it hires 100-200 more staff. On July 30, 2026 Aalo named cloud provider Crusoe as the partner for Project Ascension, its second, commercial-scale 10 MWe reactor on the Aalo-X campus: a 2027 proof-of-concept will pair a 50 MWe Aalo Pod with a Crusoe Spark modular data center at INL, with both companies targeting commercial nuclear-powered AI data center deployments by the end of 2029. Aalo says it is also preparing to submit its first commercial reactor license application (a combined construction and operating license) to the NRC in 2026, with a long-term target of 3 cents/kWh electricity.
GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy
Nuclear Fission
GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GVH, formerly GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy) is the Wilmington, North Carolina-based nuclear alliance formed by GE (60%, now GE Vernova) and Hitachi (40%) in 2007, combining reactor design, services for the global boiling-water-reactor fleet, and fuel manufacturing through Global Nuclear Fuel. Its flagship BWRX-300 small modular reactor - a 300 MWe natural-circulation design derived from the NRC-certified ESBWR - is the first grid-scale SMR under construction in the Western world, with Ontario Power Generation building the first of four units at Darlington for service by the end of 2030. In the US, TVA's Clinch River construction permit application cleared its NRC staff safety evaluation in June 2026, backed by a $400M DOE award, and in March 2026 the US and Japanese governments announced up to $40B to deploy up to 10 BWRX-300s (3 GW) in Tennessee and Alabama under the US–Japan strategic investment framework. The order book extends across Poland (ORLEN Synthos Green Energy, including a June 2026 agreement for up to six units at Włocławek), the UK (Generic Design Assessment completed December 2025; an SGE-led team bid in mid-2026 to build 14 units), a new US project with Elementl Power in Meigs County, Ohio (up to five units, agreed June 2026), Estonia (where parliament passed a comprehensive nuclear energy law in June 2026), Hungary, Saskatchewan, Lithuania (MOU signed February 2026) and Bulgaria (JV letter of intent signed December 2025), plus a March 2026 MOU with Hitachi to explore Southeast Asia. GVH lost Sweden's first new-nuclear competition in June 2026, when Vattenfall's Videberg Kraft venture picked Rolls-Royce SMR over the BWRX-300 for its Ringhals project. GVH also co-developed the Natrium sodium-cooled fast reactor with TerraPower, which began construction in Wyoming in 2026. Jason Cooper became President & CEO in January 2026. GE Vernova's Q2 2026 10-Q separately disclosed Nuclear Power segment revenue for the first time - $1,575M for H1 2026, up from $1,310M in H1 2025.
Holtec International
Nuclear Fission
Holtec International is a vertically integrated nuclear technology and services company whose core businesses include used-fuel storage and transport systems, plant decommissioning, manufacturing, and nuclear project execution. Its flagship growth program is the restart of the Palisades plant in Michigan, which would be the first U.S. nuclear plant to return from decommissioning to operations status: on August 30, 2026 Holtec began loading fuel into the 204-assembly reactor core, the most visible physical milestone yet, though extensive tests and inspections and a firm restart date still lie ahead. Its other flagship program is the SMR-300 small modular reactor platform, which Holtec is advancing at Palisades and in the UK with EDF. Holtec is also pursuing a large SMR-300 program in India - where a March 2025 U.S. DOE 10CFR810 authorization lets it share the design with partners Tata Consulting Engineers, Larsen & Toubro, and its Holtec Asia subsidiary - with a February 2026 plan to build up to 200 SMR-300s from an expanded manufacturing hub in Gujarat, and in Rwanda, where a May 2026 Comprehensive Development Agreement with the country's Atomic Energy Board targets up to roughly 5 GW of capacity, Holtec's first sub-Saharan African market. After a confidential filing in February 2026, Holtec publicly filed a Form S-1 on July 10, 2026 for a Nasdaq / Nasdaq Texas IPO under the ticker HNUC - the S-1 disclosing $989M of revenue for the 12 months ended March 31, 2026 - in an offering that Renaissance Capital estimates could raise about $2 billion (with press reporting on overall company valuation running as high as roughly $10 billion). An S-1/A amendment filed August 21, 2026 updated the offering's financials through the six months ended June 30, 2026, disclosing $269.9M of revenue (down from $286.6M in the first half of 2025) alongside higher gross operating profit of $118.5M (up from $78.8M); shares and price range remain unset as of August 31, 2026. Holtec's SMR-300 pipeline now spans Palisades, the Green River, Utah revival project, a newly cleared Oyster Creek, New Jersey site (NRC approved the plant's license termination plan on July 30, 2026, opening the way for four more SMR-300 units there), the Cottam, UK proposal with EDF, and Rwanda - and on August 4, 2026 Holtec signed a non-binding memorandum of agreement with Entergy and Hyundai Engineering & Construction to evaluate further SMR-300 projects across Entergy's Gulf South territory.
NuScale Power
Nuclear Fission
NuScale Power is a public small modular reactor developer commercializing its NRC-approved 77 MWe NuScale Power Module through ENTRA1-led deployments. In 2025-26 it advanced a nonbinding program with TVA for up to 6 GW of NuScale capacity (with CEO John Hopkins still targeting a binding PPA by year-end 2026, with no definitive agreement as of the Q2 2026 earnings call), secured a Final Investment Decision for the Romanian RoPower project (though a July 2026 Romanian government control-body audit alleging schedule slippage and cost overruns at Doicești has become a political overhang, even as Nuclearelectrica shareholders voted to keep NuScale as the sole chosen technology), and launched a strategic petrochemical process-heat partnership with Ebara Elliott Energy. NuScale remains pre-deployment and ended Q2 2026 with about $1.9B in cash, cash equivalents and investments, up roughly $900M from Q1, on Q2 revenue of $75,000 and a net loss of $50.1M. 2026 work is centered on first-module manufacturing readiness - components for 12 modules are in production - fuel supply, and converting its development pipeline into binding projects. In late August 2026 NuScale announced a strategic alliance with Nuclearn and NPX to deploy nuclear-specific AI tools across its engineering and licensing workflows (an early proof of concept cut information-search time by up to 80%), while RBC Capital cut its price target on the stock to $10 from $14 citing the still-unsigned TVA agreement.
Oklo
Nuclear Fission
Oklo is developing fast-fission power plants under its Aurora product line while building a vertically integrated nuclear business around power sales, fuel recycling, and radioisotopes. Aurora units are designed to produce 15-75 MWe and run on fresh, recycled, or down-blended fuel, targeting customers such as data centers, industrial sites, military facilities, utilities, and remote communities. Its first plant, Aurora-INL at Idaho National Laboratory, is advancing under DOE's Reactor Pilot Program - the DOE approved its Preliminary Documented Safety Analysis on June 11, 2026, leaving the final Documented Safety Analysis as the last safety-basis step before authorization. Oklo is deepening vertical integration through the June 2026 acquisitions of Oak Ridge precision manufacturer ARMEC and sodium-systems engineering firm Creative Engineers, plus its May 2026 selection for DOE's Surplus Plutonium Utilization Program, while Atomic Alchemy builds U.S. isotope supply around the Groves test reactor in Lockhart, Texas, which reached first criticality on August 5, 2026.
TerraPower
Nuclear Fission
TerraPower is a nuclear innovation company founded by Bill Gates with two business lines: the Natrium sodium fast reactor with integrated molten-salt energy storage, and TerraPower Isotopes, a medical-isotope business producing actinium-225 for targeted cancer therapies. In March 2026 the NRC issued Kemmerer Unit 1 the first construction permit for a commercial-scale advanced nuclear plant in the U.S., and on April 23, 2026 TerraPower and contractor Bechtel officially began plant construction in Wyoming, a build expected to mobilize roughly 1,600 workers; on July 21, 2026 TerraPower became the first advanced-reactor developer accepted into the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations. In January 2026 TerraPower signed a landmark agreement with Meta to develop up to eight Natrium plants in the U.S., marking a shift from a single demonstration toward a commercial fleet, and on August 14, 2026 it deepened its Korean industrial supply chain with a preliminary joint-business agreement with SK Innovation for South Korea's first commercial Natrium plant, selection of Hyundai Engineering & Construction as EPC contractor for up to eight future Natrium reactors, and a reactor-vessel manufacturing contract with Doosan Enerbility. On August 31, 2026 it awarded 12 additional supplier contracts for Kemmerer Unit 1 and an on-site sodium test and fill facility. CEO Chris Levesque has said TerraPower plans to announce a second Natrium project - this one for an AI data-center customer - before the end of 2026. The core reactor business remains pre-revenue, but Natrium has moved from development into full project execution under DOE's ARDP cost-share program, while TerraPower Isotopes already sells actinium-225 commercially to pharmaceutical partners and is building a $450 million second production facility in Philadelphia.