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2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
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Breaking ground on a new approach to construction
The drive to Kairos Power’s reactor demonstration site in Oak Ridge, Tenn., is not only scenic—it’s historic. Nearly 85 years ago, roughly 30,000 construction workers transformed orchards and farmland into a key Manhattan Project site. Depending on your route, you may pass by one of the three gatehouses that were once military checkpoints controlling access to Atomic Energy Commission production facilities.
H. Frewer, W. Keller, R. Pruschek
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 90 | Number 4 | August 1985 | Pages 411-426
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE85-4
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The modular high-temperature reactor (HTR-M) is characterized by the use of standardized reactor, heat transfer, and loop components. One or more primary circuit units make up the nuclear steam-generating system (or heat-generating system) of a HTR-M power plant. The core of the helium-cooled HTR-M consists of a randomly packed bed of spherical fuel elements (pebble bed reactor). The characteristic design of the HTR-M core ensures that permissible core temperatures are not exceeded, even if all cooling systems fail. Today, HTR-M power plants can already be applied in the combined generation of electricity, process steam, and/or district heat. In the near future the HTR-M can be used as a heat source for processing plants in the chemical industry, e.g., for methane cracking, coal gasification and similar chemical processes.