July 20th, 2022
Kairos Power in conjunction with Materion Corporation, designed a molten salt purification plant that has just been commissioned at Materion’s campus in Ohio because Kairos Power requires a source of high-purity fluoride salt for testing in its molten salt reactor design, as well as to serve as the coolant in its grid-scale fluoride salt–cooled, high-temperature reactor.
Find out more here.
June 17th, 2022
The Nuclear Engineering department received DOE Nuclear Energy related research awards of 4.7M$ as a lead institution and further funding as a collaborating institution. These funds will support several different research programs.
The Integrated Research Program lead by Professor Fratoni entitled "Bridging the gap between experiments and modeling
to improve the design of molten salt reactors".
The NEUP lead by Professor Abergel entitled "Advanced Screening Approaches for Accelerating Development of
Separations Technologies".
The NEUP lead by Professor Hosemann "High throughput mechanical testing of additively-manufactured materials" will utilize femto second laser ablation in combination with the automated microscale tensile tester to evaluate additive manufactured materials and generate data for quality control and ML approaches together with microstructure analysis.
The NEUP lead by Professor Hosemann "Science-Based Development of ASTM standard tests for graphite-based fuel pebbles" together with X-energy, ORNL and the University of Florida, will use conventional methods and develop new methods to obtain a fundamental understanding of the failure modes in pebble fuels during use and to quantify the failure rate to proctor quality control and predict performance.
Find out more here.
June 9th, 2022
Professor Per Peterson has been awarded the 2022 American Nuclear Society's Walter H. Zinn Medal in recognition of "his contributions to the development of technologies for passive safety in nuclear reactors, and his leadership to develop and commercialize fluoride salt–cooled high-temperature reactors".
The Walter H. Zinn Medal recognizes an individual for outstanding contributions to the advancement or implementation of nuclear technology. This award is to recognize notable and sustained technical contribution, leadership, or other service that has not been widely recognized, and is considered one of highest honors ANS has to give.
Find out more here.
Congratulations Professor Peterson!
April 14th, 2022
BloombergNEF has announced its twelve winners of the 2022 BNEF Pioneers program, including Department of Nuclear Engineering professor Per Peterson and alumni Mike Laufer and their team at Kairos Power. Kairos Power was recognized for its "novel advanced nuclear reactor technology to complement renewable energy sources". For over a decade, this program has sought to identify and highlight technological innovations that accelerate global decarbonization and halt climate change.
You can read more about this achievement here.
April 6th, 2022
"Search for Majorana neutrinos exploiting millikelvin cryogenics with CUORE" has been published in Nature. The Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events (CUORE, Italian for “heart”) is one of several next generation neutrinoless double-beta decay (0νββ) experiments. Affilated with the published article include those from the UC Berkeley Department of Physics, the Nuclear Science Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Engineering Divison of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as well as the UC Berkeley Department of Nuclear Engineering.
The link to the article can be found here. And further coverage of the article can be found here.
February 9th, 2022
Raluca Scarlat is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering, heads the SALT Laboratory at University of California Berkeley, and is the recipient of the ANS Mary Jane Oestmann Award. Professor Scarlat has expertise in high temperature chemistry and materials for advanced reactors, reactor design and safety analysis, and engineering ethics.
October 5th, 2021
World Nuclear News reported an update on Kairos' progress on constructing the Hermes low-power demonstration reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. As a part of their construction permit application, the US company (co-founded by UCB Professor Per Peterson, Michael Laufer, and Edward Blandford), has submitted the preliminary safety analysis report (PSAR) for its fluoride salt-cooled, high-temperature reactor (KP-FHR) to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
Kairos established a cooperative development agreement with the Tennessee Valley Authority earlier this year, and will collaborate with Materion Corporation, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Idaho National Laboratory, and the Electric Power Research Institute on the development and demonstration for Hermes. The development is also supported over seven years by a US Department of Energy Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program cost-shared award.
World Nuclear News stated that along with Kairos, there are 6 other non-light water reactor designers that have formally notified the NRC of their intent to engage in regulatory interactions. Namely "General Atomics for the Energy Multiplier Module; X-Energy for the XE-100; TerraPower and GE Hitachi for the Natrium reactor; TerraPower for its Molten Chloride Fast Reactor; Westinghouse Electric Company for its eVinci micro reactor; and Terrestrial Energy USA for its Integral Molten Salt Reactor."
[Full World Nuclear News article here]
July 2nd, 2018
UCBNE Faculty Dr. Massimiliano Fratoni will be presented the award at the RPD session at the ANS Winter Meeting, November 2018 - "For his numerous significant contributions to the conception and design of advanced reactors, and for his dedication to training the future generations of reactor physicists." ~ANS
Congratulations, Max!
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