Over the past two years, Amazon, Google, and Dow Chemical signed deals to buy electricity from so-called fourth-generation nuclear reactors designed to reach higher temperatures by using coolants other than water. Yet American utilities have shied away from the next-generation technology, sticking instead to third-generation reactors such as NuScale’s small modular design or Westinghouse’s traditional AP1000.
Not anymore. On Monday, the Tennessee Valley Authority inked a power purchase agreement with Google-backed reactor developer Kairos, marking the first such deal in the United States between a utility and a fourth-generation nuclear company.
“Energy security is national security, and electricity is the strategic commodity that is the building block for AI and our nation’s economic prosperity,” Don Moul, TVA’s chief executive, said in a statement. “The world is looking for American leadership, and this first-of-a-kind agreement is the start of an innovative way of doing business. By developing a technology, a supply chain, and a delivery model that can build an industry to unleash American energy, we can attract and support companies like Google and help America win the AI race.”
Last year, Google agreed to buy up to 500 megawatts of power from Kairos over the next decade. But under this latest deal, Google will purchase its first megawatts through the TVA grid. In the announcement, Kairos also said it was re-engineering the demonstration reactor it’s designing for commercial use, the Hermes 2, to put out 50 MW of electricity instead of 28 MW.
“This collaboration is an important enabler to making advanced nuclear energy commercially competitive,” Kairos CEO Mike Laufer said in a press release. “The re-envisioned Hermes 2 gets us closer to the commercial fleet sooner and could only be made possible by close collaboration with TVA and Google, and a supportive local community.”
The move comes amid upheaval at the TVA. Just one month ago, President Donald Trump threatened to fire the last three members of the federally-owned utility’s board of directors if they didn’t terminate Moul. With just the three board members left, the TVA lacks the quorum needed to make a final investment decision on what was supposed to be the utility’s leading small modular reactor project, the construction of one of GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy’s 300-MW SMRs at the Clinch River nuclear plant.
But Trump and Moul, who previously led nuclear power divisions at TVA and other power companies, agree on remaking the federal utility as a testing ground for nuclear technology, helping to reduce the cost of reactors by building the first-of-a-kind units and making the next ones cheaper for investor-owned utilities. While the GE-Hitachi reactor is a third-generation boiling water reactor, Kairos’ fluoride salt-cooled reactor represents the next generation up.
In a statement, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright touted Kairos as an example of the success of the agency’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program.
“The deployment of advanced nuclear reactors is essential to U.S. AI dominance and energy leadership,” he said.
