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Kairos completes a fuel performance milestone for future reactor licensing
Kairos Power finished verification and validation of KP-BISON, its computer code for predicting how TRISO fuel particles behave inside its molten-salt-cooled reactor, and plans to submit the reports to the NRC. Regulators need trusted models of fuel behaviour before licensing a reactor, so an accepted code should make licensing future Kairos plants easier.
- TRISO particles are poppy-seed-sized uranium kernels wrapped in carbon and ceramic layers that hold in radioactive products; thousands sit in each graphite pebble.
- KP-BISON models how those kernels respond to heat and burnup; Kairos built it from Idaho National Laboratory's BISON code, working with INL since 2018.
- Kairos says it is the first set of TRISO safety codes in the US to reach this stage and the first for a salt-cooled reactor.
- The NRC has not approved it yet; Kairos also plans irradiation tests of its final fuel at the PALLAS reactor in Europe.