Google, Kairos Power and the Tennessee Valley Authority announced "a new collaboration" on August 18, 2025, in a release on Kairos Power's site. Through a new power purchase agreement between Kairos Power and TVA, the release says, Kairos Power's Hermes 2 plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, will deliver up to 50 megawatts of energy to the TVA grid that powers Google data centers in Tennessee and Alabama. Parts of the release follow, not the whole.
The Agreement and Kairos Power's Deal With Google
TVA, the release says, "is the first U.S. utility to sign a PPA to buy electricity from an advanced, GEN IV reactor." Hermes 2, it adds, is the first deployment under Kairos Power's deal with Google, which is to enable 500 MW of new, advanced nuclear capacity to come online by 2035 in support of Google's load growth. Through this agreement, Google will receive "the clean energy attributes from the plant" through the TVA system, to further decarbonize its data center operations in Montgomery County, Tennessee, and Jackson County, Alabama.
Hermes 2 and the Hermes Demonstration Reactor
Kairos Power will increase Hermes 2's output from 28 MW to 50 MW "to accelerate the delivery of clean energy to Google," the release says, with that output "generated by a single reactor, scheduled to begin operations in 2030." The release does not say when construction of Hermes 2 begins.
In its note on the company, Kairos Power says it "commenced safety-related construction of the Hermes demonstration reactor" in 2025, and calls that reactor "the first non-water-cooled reactor to be approved for construction in the U.S. in over 50 years."
Will Hermes 2's single reactor begin operations in 2030, as scheduled?
Sources
- Kairos Power. Google, Kairos Power, TVA Collaborate to Meet America's Growing Energy Needs. 18 August 2025. company filing