I'm close with someone who was offered a position at a nuclear startup NuScale, that aims to manufacture cookie-cutter, modular nuclear reactors, where you scale the power plant by adding more reactors over time as your needs change, and ship the old spent ones off.
As I understand it, part of the problem in hiring is that for a nuclear startup you really need experienced engineers as you go into producing working prototypes. Depending on the position, they don't necessarily need explicit nuclear experience - my relative didn't have it - but they do need a proven track record of not majorly screwing up ever, and that requires experience you can usually only get working for years in real engineering environments. There can be no 'oops, we messed up the privacy requirements' apology or people die, meltdowns happen, and the company gets the biggest of red flags.
That's not to say you need to be old to start a nuclear company, but that you will probably need to work with older engineers, who are harder to hire, settled in their jobs, and scattered across the US, with mortgages, families, and the like.
This is why I don't think nuclear power is the future. Renewable power can afford to be innovative. Nuclear power will never innovate as fast. Even if it's better than wind right now, you can't have people hack on it, or manufacture in the cheapest country (I hope), or have small countries regulate its use in a cost efficient way.
Of course, it's great for the countries who already have it up and running, and those countries should also look at the latest generations, and the next generation which are being designed (which should be better and safer in every way that the old ones which meltdown when a tsunami hits them).
I love asking pro-nuclear Australians which level of government (federal or state) should regulate nuclear power, and who should be the minister in charge.
Same goes for some renewable power sources like hydroelectric plants. Bursting dams are more dangerous than meltdowns and have killed way more than nuclear disasters.
The problem with this view is that if you look at the energy demand curve for the human race, there are only two long-term sources that can even potentially satisfy the demand: nuclear and space-based solar. Wind, geothermal, ground-based solar, tidal...there just isn't enough energy there to satisfy the demands, especially once you factor in the inefficiencies of power transmission.
The reason it's a problem, of course, is because the both methods are politically difficult and require significant engineering (if not research) and capital investment to make them practical.
Besides the point brought up by jeltz about what "renewable" includes, I fail to see how the speed of innovation, or the fact that people can "hack it", will determine which energy source is "the future".
Argentina, a developing country with a history of social turmoil and a relatively high level of goverment corruption, has been using nuclear power efficently since the '70s.
Probably "the future" will need mixed energy generation. It won't be only nuclear nor only renewable.
Given the life expectancy of reactors, we'll probably not live to see the last nuclear reactors decommissioned (unless we end up as cyborgs). We'll probably need more of it in the next 20 years (what's the alternative? gas is running out, coal is just dirty, and renewables have issues).
But I see renewable power getting a lot cheaper than nuclear. It's easier to cut costs. It's easier to experiment with new stuff. More automation will bring the costs down, while nuclear tends to be one-off projects (note, modular nuclear might level the playing field a bit, but you can bet that they won't be laser-focused on bringing the price right down).
Energy is all about costs. Nuclear power is unlikely to drop in cost as much as solar and wind.
I'm so glad there are nuclear startups. There's so much to be done in this field. It's enormously tough to disrupt but licensing a design might be a start.
Talent is extraordinarily hard to find for this. All the great engineers with domain experience are starting to retire. The ones that are left are extremely risk averse. You have to attempt to poach from GE or Westinghouse.
I worked for Westinghouse for two years doing Pipe Analysis and Fracture Mechanics. There are funny things that happen to steel piping at 2250 psi and 600 degrees Fahrenheit. Only nukes are familiar with the stresses and environmental fatigues that can happen in that environment over an 80 year period.
I fear certifying a design can be hideously expensive. I am not familiar with the rules, but I'd assume one would need to build a complete reactor and operate it for some time.
It is hideously expensive. Don't know how these guys are gonna do it. I remember talking with a prominent VC who had a division in the energy space. They got a few nuclear startup pitches. Always, it was 'we need 100 mil... and 50 of that is going to the gov't for licensing'. If these guys have figured out a way around this. All the power to them.
and $50Mill is probably not going to pay for building a test reactor and all the research that will need to be done before that plus you will need some decent HPC grunt to do you CFD modeling then real world physical models (1:1 and over scale is not cheap) to prove the math works.
"There are funny things that happen to steel piping at 2250 psi and 600 degrees Fahrenheit."
And why we have to use steel piping at 153atm and 300C?
The fact is that we are using a design that is totally obsolete and designed for creating nuclear bombs, not for giving us energy.
The good thing about startups is that they could think different, use creativity to innovate and invent new methods. Einstein was not very intelligent a la Von Newman, contrary to popular belief, but he was super creative.
Hold on there buddy. All Western designed PWRs or BWRs (which is nearly all of them) are not designed to be yielding bombs. Their neutron flux is simply not high enough to give enough enrichment.
Two other types of plants you might be thinking of when taking bomb materials into account. The russian design for Chernobyl was meant to produce electricity and bomb fuel which is why it had a graphite moderator which creates a very high neutron flux.
The other one is the sodium cooled breeder reactor which we chose instead of the molten salt design discussed in the article. The sodium breeder was good at making plutonium but still was never designed to have that plutonium removed in any usable fashion. Sodium is a tricky substance it reacts with water violently. The french still have a plant or two going as do the Chinese but it's really not a stellar design.
Now, I agree about the temps and pressures being unnecessary. The reason for these is about efficiency of scale. In a power grid like America's where we need 1 gigawatt and greater plants, plus with licensing a plant being so difficult, you build the biggest baddest plant you can which can output the most power. This means you go with the highest temps and pressures while still being ultra safe to create a more power efficient reactor.
Smaller reactors which would be better for the power grids of the world. Like 250 mega watts would not need these extreme environments. There are some great designs for a back of trailer truck reactor which can just hook up to a coal plant's secondary systems (steam turbines and such).
The best part of nuclear startups is nuclear is not a 'if' question. It's a when. I just hope we can disrupt quickly enough to bring that sort of power production here sooner rather then later.
"Now, I agree about the temps and pressures being unnecessary. The reason for these is about efficiency of scale. In a power grid like America's where we need 1 gigawatt and greater plants, plus with licensing a plant being so difficult, you build the biggest baddest plant you can which can output the most power. This means you go with the highest temps and pressures while still being ultra safe to create a more power efficient reactor. [P] Smaller reactors which would be better for the power grids of the world. Like 250 mega watts would not need these extreme environments."
This isn't actually accurate. Reactor core water is pressurized to raise the boiling point -- at 0.1 MPa (atmospheric) it's 100 ºC, at 15 MPa (reactor coolant) it's 342 ºC, so they can push water to around 300 ºC and still keep it liquid in the core. The higher the temperature, the higher (in general) the efficiency of converting heat to work (in the case of nuclear plants, efficiency of the steam turbine). This is pretty much independent of the size of the reactor.
(Why liquid water? One huge reason is neutronics (the nuclear part): a very high density of hydrogen nuclei (H in H2O) is useful for scattering neutrons, which slows them down to speeds where they get absorbed by heavy nuclei (reactor fuel) and start fission reactions. [This isn't necessary: in fact "fast reactors" work with neutrons flying at relativistic speeds. But it's much easier.])
300 ºC is actually pretty cool; the steam from coal power plants gets up to around 600 ºC [1], and internal-combustion gas turbines can reach temperatures of even 1,600 ºC [2]. Water-cooled reactors are held back in efficiency by the need to keep water liquid at core temperatures. Conceptually they can get a bit further by pressurizing water to supercritical conditions [3], at about 510-550 ºC/25 MPa; these aren't being built. (These are fast reactors; the density of this supercritical water is very low, about 0.1 kg/L, so it's a weaker moderator).
There's enormous value in having 60 years of data on the neutron irradiation properties and mechanical failure modes of a material. An "obsolete" design is also a well-understood one, and you can't afford to fail fast and often in the nuclear industry.
Heat engines are significantly more energy efficient at 600 degrees Fahrenheit than 300C (572F). Especially when you want to use a 2 stage system and limit how much your irradiating your turbines.
PS: There are actually a lot of reactor designs out there, but overall most designed are based on a small number vary old basic designs and a large number of tradeoffs. For example many people love Pebble bed reactor's, but they are gas cooled and use a lot of graphite at high temperatures which will burn with just a little oxygen at which point you lose your moderator and things can go vary badly.
I wonder what this means for nuclear engineering's future, because I'm looking at Transatomic Power's team and I'm seeing a lot of influence from academia. Both members of the actual management team are PhD candidates, and all three members of the advisory board are professors. Granted this is one sample, but it seems like the barriers to entry for energy startups in general, but especially those dealing with nuclear power, are too steep at the moment for anything to move forward without help from academia.
It's also a meaningless statement from the sidelines. Just where are all of these outlandish reactor designs coming from, anyways? Oh, right. Academia. This isn't a case of a hidebound academia and a fantastically innovative private sector. Really, the opposite is true.
There's a lot of young talent out there - enrollment basically hockey-sticked while I was studying nuclear engineering from '06-'10. Their best bet is probably finding the right kind of phD student, because the real hot-shots from Westinghouse and GE can make more money striking out as consultants.
I personally decided to get out of nuclear engineering and into physics, but best of luck to these guys and gals.
I got out of nuclear engineering and into fine art oddly enough :). But mostly cause I like that the web doesn't regulate what I can and cannot do.
I'm really pulling for this new generation. Heck, I want to get back into nuclear engineering once I have a startup or two under my belt. But a lot of what it takes to be successful is gonna be politics and bureaucracy. Knowing the older engineers who have moved up to NRC is a huge boon. Also being able to work utility company execs that want to take a chance. Then there's the actual politicians to convince. It's a lot of work. Most of it isn't going to be actual engineering.
I'm not sure if this got modded down because people think I'm being facetious, but I'm seriously wondering what happened with that. For people who don't know, every country in the world, besides France, used "Dollars" for their units of reactivity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Slotin#The_Dollar_unit_of...
France, on the other hand, used "Francs". Conveniently, the exchange rate was 1:1. I'd be surprised if they went and changed everything to Euro's now, but I haven't heard anything firsthand from French nuclear engineers.
Comments which are voted down are often misunderstood. More often then not, those comments consist just of a single sentence. A few days ago I made a comment, which had 3 downvotes, however the 3 posts where I explained myself had 15 upvotes in total. I think it's great that HN has this feedback mechanism that sometimes lacks in real life (especially in non face-to-face conversations).
Well, I'm sure it's something that could be worked out, but there will likely be naming issues between French and Non-French nuclear engineers working together. It seems relevant to me, given that the topic was to bring French engineers into a U.S. startup.
You probably got downvoted because, most people don't know Slotin literally proposed a unit of reactivity called the "dollar", and most thought you meant to type "currency" instead of "reactivity" which would make it a bad sarcastic joke... I know my jokes often get downvoted too :)
I am French, working in Germany having founded a Limited in UK and I spent some years working in Denmark. If you factor everything in, the cost difference between the US and EU is negligible.
In the nuclear field, like in any highly skilled engineering field, the costs will come first from the salary of your employees. In fact, it will be cheaper in Europe, because in Europe, highly skilled engineers tend to work for less money because they have 6 weeks holidays (which you can take), 3 month sick days, very good health insurance and a 40h week. When you start to build stuff, the BOM is the same in the US or in Europe.
This is from my experience in the oil & gas and pharmaceutical industries (my field as process & chemical engineer).
I think what the GP tried to say is that France is not the easiest environment to launch a startup. Labor laws, taxes etc. make it one of the less desirable places in Europe to start a company.
If dealing with administrative stuff is too difficult for the entrepreneur, they could always try to find comparable talent elsewhere or to convince the established, proven talent to move where it's convenient for the entrepreneur.
The older age demographic may work in their favor --- the "about to retire" crowd might be willing to work with them on pretty favorable terms, especially if they are flexibile on location and hours. It would be a heck of a lot more interesting and rewarding than consulting part-time for Westinghouse or GE, which is what they would probably otherwise do.
I've been thinking a lot about this kind of problem because the foundry industry is in much the same state. My father has been working in it (metallurgy, process/lean, product design and test, etc.) for ~45 years and is retiring in a few years. The foundry industry is also a field with basically nobody between the ages of 25-55 in the US, and he's thinking about what he will do to keep busy once the pension and social security kick in, apart from the obvious occasional contracting gig.
Ninja rockstar wanted for lean startup in nuclear sector. Must know MVC framework (Matter/Valence/Controller), ATOM feeds, and the Ruby "split" method. Perks include free energy drinks.
I think engineers in hard sciences are a bit different than "startup" software "engineers". Anyone can make mistakes of course, but the process and professionalism is different.
I'm not bashing all programmers, just ones who are part of the "rockstar" startup scene.
I might be wrong, but I was under the impression that engineering, with the exception of software engineering, was still very much a "suit and tie" field.
I wonder how politically difficult it would be to get one of these built near Yucca Mountain. Given that a) it's already a nuclear hotzone in the minds of the public, and b) this offers some possibility of improving the situation while generating exportable power. You'd think this would be an interesting prospect to at least one philanthropically-minded billionaire.
I was thinking that too. There should be plenty of grads from the US Navy Nuclear Power School, and the officer grads are likely to have at minimum undergrad engineering degrees either from the Naval Academy or civilian universities.
My mother was office staff at a nuclear plant for a number of years in the late 80s/early 90s (and for reasons passing understanding, received training as some sort of emergency/backup operator, despite making very clear that in an emergency, she'd be driving away as quickly as possible). From what she tells me, former US Navy officers and enlisted were absolutely everywhere, as both employees and NRC personnel.
The photo @11:30 wasn't identified correctly. She's talking about spent fuel, high-level waste ("very big problem"), but the photo slide is absolutely not that at all; it is stored depleted uranium hexafluoride, a byproduct of isotope enrichment. (The site is the USEC gaseous diffusion plant in Paducah, Kentucky, USA). Comparatively benign chemical waste.
(Maybe I misunderstood, but the talk seemed to imply that spent fuel storage was being shown. It wasn't.)
The majority of AECL (the CANDU reactor team) is un- or under employed after the buyout from the Canadian government - that's an entire workforce to tap into.
Anyone know if this is a thorium-based Molten Salt Reactor?
If so, why is the now quite well-known MSR advocate Kirk Sorensen not involved in this project, but instead started his own company (Flibe Energy) to design and produce a thorium MSR?
Still, I have a feeling that two US private startups is no match vs Chinese government MSR let alone other nuclear energy technology spending.
I think this has to do with using nuclear waste from currently running reactors to generate electricity. (If thorium is part of that waste and you already knew that sorry)
Its the frontier of reactors-that-don't-explode. In the short term, our laws were written with light water reactors in mind, so anybody who wants to build a thorium reactor is going to have to build all the same expensive safety features that light water reactors need, plus the special metallurgy that molten salt reactors need. So basically it doesn't make sense until something changes.
> In the short term, our laws were written with light water reactors in mind, so anybody who wants to build a thorium reactor is going to have to build all the same expensive safety features that light water reactors need, plus the special metallurgy that molten salt reactors need.
It always annoys me that laws on safety requirements go into implementation details rather than stating the desired result. If the requirements simply said that "an independent audit must show that the safety exceeds the following thresholds: ...", safer technologies wouldn't incur the additional overhead you describe.
Thorium reactors are often MSR designs too. But if this offers the possibility of reducing our existing waste supplies, it might make it more publicly palatable.
80% of the cost of nuclear energy is building the reactor. With around $500B worth of existing reactor infrastructure worldwide, which runs on Uranium, don't expect that to go away too soon.
I do not think they are simply attempting to replace existing reactors. I know in many countries governments have slowed down building reactors because of environmental concerns and costs. With the dwindling oil deposits and increasing energy need, safe and reliable nuclear reactors will be in high demand.
These two have admirable goals but I don't think I'm alone in finding it hard to justify the terms 'nuclear reactor' and 'startup' in the same sentence together. It's incredibly judgemental I know, but I have a hard time taking those two young PhD students on a stage talking about nuclear power seriously... and I'm a young person myself. It just makes me think, will anyone take such a business seriously if they brand themselves as a tech startup? IMHO they would do better to actively steer themselves away from being seen in this light.
So are you saying that absolutely nobody that can do the job has applied? Or have you turned away qualified applicants because they aren't a "cultural fit" or properly credentialed? I'm betting on the later.
Well, our last developer hire had no degree of any kind, is 20 while everyone else is 36-50 and he is working out great. We've had 1 resume in the last 2 months come in. I wouldn't want to spoil your pre-conceived notions, though.
edit: By the way, I read your comment history. We do all our hiring through recruiters because we are a small team without the time to chase talent--our interest and time is spent coding.
Maybe that is the issue--you won't work with recruiters, and most ruby shops are small, so they outsource hiring to recruiters. As a datapoint for you, I got this job through a recruiter, and I'm quite happy with it. Recruiters got me several other interviews with decent places as well. There are decent recruiters out there with real jobs--you just have to use your gut about who isn't sketchy. We gave this opening to 3 different recruiters that we work with--maybe they called you and you ignored them.
As I understand it, part of the problem in hiring is that for a nuclear startup you really need experienced engineers as you go into producing working prototypes. Depending on the position, they don't necessarily need explicit nuclear experience - my relative didn't have it - but they do need a proven track record of not majorly screwing up ever, and that requires experience you can usually only get working for years in real engineering environments. There can be no 'oops, we messed up the privacy requirements' apology or people die, meltdowns happen, and the company gets the biggest of red flags.
That's not to say you need to be old to start a nuclear company, but that you will probably need to work with older engineers, who are harder to hire, settled in their jobs, and scattered across the US, with mortgages, families, and the like.