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From theory to reality
Craig Piercycpiercy@ans.org
Recently, I spent an afternoon at Kairos Power’s Hermes construction site in Oak Ridge, Tenn. What I saw there was not a rendering, not a licensing presentation, not another panel about the future of advanced nuclear. I saw dozens of pilings built to NQA-1 standards. I saw seismic isolators ready for installation. I saw heavy equipment moving dirt and crews preparing concrete and steel.
I also saw a company doing genuinely innovative work with precast concrete techniques that could materially improve how we construct reactors in the future. None of it looked theoretical. It looked industrial.
Richard M. Ambrosi (Univ. Leicester), Tim Tinsley (National Nuclear Laboratory), Alessandra Barco (Univ. Leicester), Ramy Mesalam (Univ. Leicester), Emily Jane Watkinson (Univ. Leicester), Hannah Sargeant (Univ. Leicester), Chris Bicknell (Univ. Leicester), Tony Crawford (Univ. Leicester), Rebecca Sanderson (National Nuclear Laboratory), Jacob White (National Nuclear Laboratory), Mark Sarsfield (National Nuclear Laboratory), Nick Hanigan (National Nuclear Laboratory), Giorgio Magistrati (European Space Agency), Christophe Fongarland (European Space Agency), Markus Landgraf (European Space Agency), Kevin Simpson (European Thermodynamics), Richard Tuley (European Thermodynamics), Marie-Claire Perkinson (Airbus), Robert Hopton (Airbus), Frederic Lattwein (ArianeGroup), Daniel Freis (European Commission), Rudy J. M. Konings (European Commission), Piers Slater (Digital Reef)
Proceedings | Nuclear and Emerging Technologies for Space (NETS 2023) | Idaho Falls, ID, May 7-11, 2023 | Pages 282-286