Kairos Power

Mike Laufer earned a degree at Stanford before completing doctoral work in nuclear engineering at UC Berkeley, where he worked in Per Peterson's laboratory on fluoride salt-cooled reactor design. He co-founded Kairos Power in 2016 with Peterson and Edward Blandford, and leads the company as CEO. Under his leadership, Kairos received a construction permit from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2023 for the Hermes demonstration reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee — the first non-light-water advanced reactor to receive NRC construction authorization, and a major milestone for the molten-salt-cooled small modular reactor sector.

Per Peterson is a professor of nuclear engineering at UC Berkeley with a national reputation as a leading expert in fluoride-salt-cooled high-temperature reactors (FHR). He co-founded Kairos Power in 2016 and serves as Chief Nuclear Officer, providing technical and regulatory leadership for the company's molten fluoride salt reactor program. Peterson has advised the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Department of Energy on advanced reactor licensing for decades. His research on passive safety systems and thermal hydraulics in salt-cooled reactors forms the scientific foundation for Kairos Power's Hermes and KP-FHR designs.

Edward Blandford earned his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley under Per Peterson and built his reputation as an expert in nuclear thermal hydraulics. He spent five years as a project manager at EPRI before joining the University of New Mexico as a tenure-track professor leading an FHR research program. Blandford co-founded Kairos Power in 2016 and serves as CTO, directing the engineering of the company's fluoride salt-cooled reactor systems. His bridge experience between academic research, utility-industry R&D at EPRI, and academic leadership gives Kairos an unusually applied technical perspective on advanced reactor design.