9 ms·

Oklo has a plan to make tiny nuclear reactors that run off nuclear waste

110 points by mrfusion 5y ago

Accujack 5y ago
I think this is an interesting effort, but I question their fuel source - despite common perceptions, there's not a lot of suitable material around that could be recycled in this way, and what is available is of non uniform composition - like the waste from the experimental reactor design they mention. That factor could make reprocessing the stuff into fuel suitable for a given micro design expensive. It's great that they're trying to use waste material to reduce the waste stream, but that's far from the biggest problem new reactor designs face... by volume, nuclear waste produced by power plants just isn't that much material. If these folks were somehow saying they could recycle the waste generated over decades of bomb making, that would be worthwhile... but that's not really usable waste.
- hairytrog 5y ago
  A good example of solving the wrong problem.
- _n_b_ 5y ago
  I have some very recent, very specific domain knowledge in this area; there is more low-burnup ex-research reactor material, off-spec material, etc. out there looking for a good home than you might imagine—-especially at micro-reactor quantities.
  - Accujack 5y ago
    More power to them...and us, then.
natch 5y ago
I understand stealth mode for startups, but the secretive, shadowy web presence in combination with nuclear baggage makes them feel a little sinister. It seems like being involved with such a historically fraught energy source they would want to come out of the shadows and into the sunlight, so to speak.
- minitoar 5y ago
  For the past idk 10 years I’ve felt like nuclear power was really on the way out but over the past like 24 months I’ve noticed a huge resurgence in support for these types of projects. Maybe that’s just my bubble but it seemed like a serious inflection.
  - natch 5y ago
    Could be PR spend. Or people are starting to notice climate change, and aren’t aware that large scale batteries exist. Also people divesting from oil (which will still remain hugely useful and beneficial for a long time) want to diversify into other energy areas. Then there is lobbying. Nuclear often has big ticket projects that don’t have to foot the bill for their own costs (the nuclear industry has been made immune from liability under US law at least) so there’s a lot of money to be made and once you build the thing, consumers who don’t have other options are at your mercy as it’s a single source you control.
nickpp 5y ago
Finally! Yes! More! More!!! We need to experiment every day with nuclear power. We need to try new things. We need to learn. We need to make mistakes and learn from them. We need to conquer this paralyzing fear. We need to not be afraid of the possible bad consequences because the upside is infinitely better and more important. We need to continue to improve and evolve our technology. It's our only hope.
- jsilence 5y ago
  Yeah, what could possibly go wrong?
  - p1mrx 5y ago
    We could fail, and destabilize the climate.
  - nickpp 5y ago
    We could make some tiny portions of Earth uninhabitable for the next few thousand years. Still much, much better than making the whole Earth uninhabitable forever, which is what we are doing right now.
    - Klinky 5y ago
      It's not just uninhabitable, someone has to maintain that property forever. You don't just put an "abandoned" sign on a melted down nuclear reactor and expect the problem to be solved. You don't just put the waste in barrels and tanks that go into the ground and have them leak into local rivers and ground water, which is what we're doing now. We still need to clean up the nuclear messes from earlier decades of nuclear research, a time when we were not afraid of the bad consequences of nuclear, and it shows, much to our detriment.
      - AngryData 5y ago
        That is like pointing at a model-T and claiming how dangerous cars are and how they are too dangerous for people to drive. All of our real nuclear problems are due to plants designed in the 50s and 60s, which is only around 15 years after nuclear power was first discovered. Of course that shit was/is unsafe, they barely understood the materials and science they were dealing with, they still had xray machines in shoe stores at the time. There is no disputing that our nuclear science has come leaps and bounds since then and there is no reason to think we can't make safe nuclear power plants. The least we could do is atleast replacing the current 50 year old plants that are still running today with modern safer designs.
lizknope 5y ago
I read the name "Oklo" and thought "that place already had nuclear reactors." I assume the company named themselves after the natural fission reactors discovered in Oklo, Gabon. 1.7 billion years ago the concentrations of fissile material and groundwater were just right that nuclear fission reactions happened naturally. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reacto...
myself248 5y ago
Clever name! "Oklo" is the name of a region in Gabon with rich uranium deposits. In the 1970s, it was noticed that uranium mined from the region had a different isotopic makeup than expected, and it was characteristic of spent fuel. Further investigation revealed that, billions of years (many half-lives) ago, when the naturally-occurring uranium was much "hotter", it was sufficiently concentrated to form a natural fission reactor. Groundwater acted as a moderator, and as the vein of ore would heat up from the reaction, the water would turn to steam, which would form voids in the moderator and slow the reaction down. It would cool, water would seep back in, and the reactor regulated itself this way for a few hundred thousand years before its fuel burned to a concentration too low to continue. Now there's a startup with this name which is gonna make it harder to search for, but if that helps solve more problems than it creates, more power to them.
- devoutsalsa 5y ago
  Illinois EnergyProf did a pretty good video on this! Natural Nuclear Reactor / 9m26s => https://youtu.be/pMjXAAxgR-M https://youtu.be/pMjXAAxgR-M
- rbanffy 5y ago
  Love that they refer to a reactor that ran unsupervised for millennia without any major incidents ;-)
  - tim333 5y ago
    Or at least no incidents that got reported to the media.
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      No humans were harmed in the operation of the reactor.
      - drran 5y ago
        But it waste is harmful even today. We should dig it out of ground and safely store it under ground.
alexgmcm 5y ago
Weird! I just saw this mentioned in Joe Scott's recent video on Nuclear Waste[1] I hope it's successful as I feel nuclear fission power has been unfairly maligned. I strongly recommend the book Atomic Accidents by James Mahaffey[2] to learn more about how fission power plants work and what went wrong at Chernobyl etc. - it's one of my favourite books of all-time. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96et8ZGsxJY&t=545s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96et8ZGsxJY&t=545s [2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20579068-atomic-accidents https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20579068-atomic-accident...
- lizknope 5y ago
  I subscribe to Tom Scott's youtube channel and I wondered how did I miss the video you are talking about. This is Tom Scott's channel. https://www.youtube.com/user/enyay https://www.youtube.com/user/enyay The video you linked to is interesting but it is created by someone named Joe Scott, not Tom Scott.
  - alexgmcm 5y ago
    Sorry, I meant Joe Scott - I somehow confused myself in the process of writing the comment.
- ampdepolymerase 5y ago
  A lot of big countries have significant interests in preventing smaller states from acquiring nuclear arms. It is difficult to say how much of the FUD around civilian nuclear power was planted on purpose by governments.
- Buttons840 5y ago
  Great book. One of the chapters is named "The US government almost never lost nuclear weapons" if I remember correctly. A glimpse into the author's sense of humor.
  - alexgmcm 5y ago
    Yeah, his other book "Atomic Adventures" was recommended to me by my friends and also mentioned in the book "The Future of Fusion Energy" by Parisi and Ball. I'll have to check it out!
qayxc 5y ago
To me this has way too many signs of vapourware: • highly complex technology that has been around for decades, yet the team seems to lack any experienced members (judging from the photo) • no existing solutions are beyond the test/prototype phase • pretty renderings in an unrealistic setting • lots of vague statements regarding the technology, yet they already know that the final product will be housed in stylish buildings (wtf?) I don't have much confidence in this company, but I'd be pleasantly surprised to be shown wrong in a couple of years.
- MsMowz 5y ago
  What makes you think the setting is unrealistic? And why is it an issue that the housing looks pleasant? I’m sure it won’t look exactly like, but for the types of customers that are in the market for consistent 1.5 MWe at $0.06/KWh (their target), a decent-looking exterior and an ability to be placed in remote settings seem like desirable product features.
  - qayxc 5y ago
    > What makes you think the setting is unrealistic? No one in their right mind builds a structure containing a nuclear facility right next to a fully grown tree, for example. If the tree is a spruce, for example, it'd likely be a shallow root tree, meaning not only would the roots penetrate the foundation, it'd also be prone to windthrow - a serious security risk considering the building is housing a nuclear facility. There's also no security measures to be seen in any of the renderings (apart maybe from the tiny fence right next to the fully-developed road). Doesn't spark much confidence in security against proliferation concerns. > And why is it an issue that the housing looks pleasant? The issue isn't what the housing looks like. The issue is that it's mentioned at all given the current stage of development. Just to clarify: the company has been around for 8 years and isn't licensed to even produce prototype reactors yet. Compare this to some of the competition mentioned in the article: • Elysium Industries (just as small, ~6 years old) [0] features a CAD rendering of their reactor design front and centre • HolosGen [1] features a detailed CAD rendering of their reactor design on the landing page and includes tons of reference material • NuGen, founded in 2006 [2] - which is basically a two-person operation with an office in what looks like an apartment building in a residential area [3] - features a CAD rendering of their reactor on their homepage, plus related patents • XEnergy [4], founded in 2009 and a little bigger, features CAD renderings of both the reactor design and the fuel cells on their landing page General Atomics - another competitor mentioned in the article - is too big and thus not a fair comparison, which is why I left them out. I hope you start to notice a pattern here. No matter how small and unimpressive these companies might seem at first glance, all of them focus on the actual technology behind their product and that's what they put at the centre of their presentation. Oklo, OTOH, doesn't do any of that. I understand that they're in "stealth mode" or whatever, but if you do a CNBC interview and the press material you bring consists of a neat house in a boreal forest with a tree right next to the roof of a nuclear facility and no security measures to be seen anywhere, I call BS on that. Security concerns are handwaved away without even addressing the point (are the reactors that “operate without security forces and have impeccable security records over many decades.” also found in remote locations?), regulatory obstacles and poor economics aren't addressed either, but instead the reactors will be housed in “aesthetically pleasing” structures - as if anyone cares if they are intended to be located in remote locations, fenced away and obviously surrounded by forest or desert... [0] http://www.elysiumindustries.com http://www.elysiumindustries.com [1] http://www.holosgen.com http://www.holosgen.com [2] https://www.nucdev.com https://www.nucdev.com [3] https://bit.ly/2SI9yVK https://bit.ly/2SI9yVK (Google Street View of the principal office according to the latest business report filed with the North Carolina Secretary of State) [4] https://x-energy.com https://x-energy.com
yellow_lead 5y ago
The article mentions they want to have these reactors unguarded and running without a human present. It seems dangerous to me, but at least for the security portion, I could imagine some kind of physical barriers and camera setup that would allow it. As for having no maintenance person there, I think it's a bit more risky.
shadilay 5y ago
Not to be confused with Onkalo the spent nuclear fuel disposal site. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...
monocasa 5y ago
I thought fast reactors were de facto banned in the US for civilian uses because of the proliferation concerns of the plutonium generated? Maybe this is exposing the extent of my knowledge and not all fast reactors are breeder reactors?
- acidburnNSA 5y ago
  It is commonly stated that 'recycling nuclear fuel was banned by Jimmy Carter and remains banned to this day'. While Jimmy Carter did put a moratorium on it in 1977, Regan actually lifted it in '81 [1]. [1] http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2014/ph241/parekh2/docs/RS22542.pdf http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2014/ph241/parekh2/docs/RS...
ngcc_hk 5y ago
Do not worry. If USA stop it. These will go to china. And got it developed. Without regulation or worry. We are fine!
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  China has no regulations? That...seems kinda wrong.
dtgriscom 5y ago
When I read that the plants are "still several years off", and the most promoted feature (shown in three out of four images) is the "A-frame structures that are aesthetically pleasing", my skepticism went off the charts.

110 points by mrfusion 5y ago

I think this is an interesting effort, but I question their fuel source - despite common perceptions, there's not a lot of suitable material around that could be recycled in this way, and what is available is of non uniform composition - like the waste from the experimental reactor design they mention. That factor could make reprocessing the stuff into fuel suitable for a given micro design expensive. It's great that they're trying to use waste material to reduce the waste stream, but that's far from the biggest problem new reactor designs face... by volume, nuclear waste produced by power plants just isn't that much material. If these folks were somehow saying they could recycle the waste generated over decades of bomb making, that would be worthwhile... but that's not really usable waste.

hairytrog 5y ago
A good example of solving the wrong problem.
_n_b_ 5y ago
I have some very recent, very specific domain knowledge in this area; there is more low-burnup ex-research reactor material, off-spec material, etc. out there looking for a good home than you might imagine—-especially at micro-reactor quantities.
- Accujack 5y ago
  More power to them...and us, then.

natch 5y ago

I understand stealth mode for startups, but the secretive, shadowy web presence in combination with nuclear baggage makes them feel a little sinister. It seems like being involved with such a historically fraught energy source they would want to come out of the shadows and into the sunlight, so to speak.

minitoar 5y ago
For the past idk 10 years I’ve felt like nuclear power was really on the way out but over the past like 24 months I’ve noticed a huge resurgence in support for these types of projects. Maybe that’s just my bubble but it seemed like a serious inflection.
- natch 5y ago
  Could be PR spend. Or people are starting to notice climate change, and aren’t aware that large scale batteries exist. Also people divesting from oil (which will still remain hugely useful and beneficial for a long time) want to diversify into other energy areas. Then there is lobbying. Nuclear often has big ticket projects that don’t have to foot the bill for their own costs (the nuclear industry has been made immune from liability under US law at least) so there’s a lot of money to be made and once you build the thing, consumers who don’t have other options are at your mercy as it’s a single source you control.

nickpp 5y ago

Finally! Yes! More! More!!! We need to experiment every day with nuclear power. We need to try new things. We need to learn. We need to make mistakes and learn from them. We need to conquer this paralyzing fear. We need to not be afraid of the possible bad consequences because the upside is infinitely better and more important. We need to continue to improve and evolve our technology. It's our only hope.

jsilence 5y ago
Yeah, what could possibly go wrong?
- p1mrx 5y ago
  We could fail, and destabilize the climate.
- nickpp 5y ago
  We could make some tiny portions of Earth uninhabitable for the next few thousand years. Still much, much better than making the whole Earth uninhabitable forever, which is what we are doing right now.
  - Klinky 5y ago
    It's not just uninhabitable, someone has to maintain that property forever. You don't just put an "abandoned" sign on a melted down nuclear reactor and expect the problem to be solved. You don't just put the waste in barrels and tanks that go into the ground and have them leak into local rivers and ground water, which is what we're doing now. We still need to clean up the nuclear messes from earlier decades of nuclear research, a time when we were not afraid of the bad consequences of nuclear, and it shows, much to our detriment.
    - AngryData 5y ago
      That is like pointing at a model-T and claiming how dangerous cars are and how they are too dangerous for people to drive. All of our real nuclear problems are due to plants designed in the 50s and 60s, which is only around 15 years after nuclear power was first discovered. Of course that shit was/is unsafe, they barely understood the materials and science they were dealing with, they still had xray machines in shoe stores at the time. There is no disputing that our nuclear science has come leaps and bounds since then and there is no reason to think we can't make safe nuclear power plants. The least we could do is atleast replacing the current 50 year old plants that are still running today with modern safer designs.

lizknope 5y ago

I read the name "Oklo" and thought "that place already had nuclear reactors." I assume the company named themselves after the natural fission reactors discovered in Oklo, Gabon. 1.7 billion years ago the concentrations of fissile material and groundwater were just right that nuclear fission reactions happened naturally. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reacto...

myself248 5y ago

Clever name! "Oklo" is the name of a region in Gabon with rich uranium deposits. In the 1970s, it was noticed that uranium mined from the region had a different isotopic makeup than expected, and it was characteristic of spent fuel. Further investigation revealed that, billions of years (many half-lives) ago, when the naturally-occurring uranium was much "hotter", it was sufficiently concentrated to form a natural fission reactor. Groundwater acted as a moderator, and as the vein of ore would heat up from the reaction, the water would turn to steam, which would form voids in the moderator and slow the reaction down. It would cool, water would seep back in, and the reactor regulated itself this way for a few hundred thousand years before its fuel burned to a concentration too low to continue. Now there's a startup with this name which is gonna make it harder to search for, but if that helps solve more problems than it creates, more power to them.

devoutsalsa 5y ago
Illinois EnergyProf did a pretty good video on this! Natural Nuclear Reactor / 9m26s => https://youtu.be/pMjXAAxgR-M https://youtu.be/pMjXAAxgR-M
rbanffy 5y ago
Love that they refer to a reactor that ran unsupervised for millennia without any major incidents ;-)
- tim333 5y ago
  Or at least no incidents that got reported to the media.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    No humans were harmed in the operation of the reactor.
    - drran 5y ago
      But it waste is harmful even today. We should dig it out of ground and safely store it under ground.

alexgmcm 5y ago

Weird! I just saw this mentioned in Joe Scott's recent video on Nuclear Waste[1] I hope it's successful as I feel nuclear fission power has been unfairly maligned. I strongly recommend the book Atomic Accidents by James Mahaffey[2] to learn more about how fission power plants work and what went wrong at Chernobyl etc. - it's one of my favourite books of all-time. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96et8ZGsxJY&t=545s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96et8ZGsxJY&t=545s [2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20579068-atomic-accidents https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20579068-atomic-accident...

lizknope 5y ago
I subscribe to Tom Scott's youtube channel and I wondered how did I miss the video you are talking about. This is Tom Scott's channel. https://www.youtube.com/user/enyay https://www.youtube.com/user/enyay The video you linked to is interesting but it is created by someone named Joe Scott, not Tom Scott.
- alexgmcm 5y ago
  Sorry, I meant Joe Scott - I somehow confused myself in the process of writing the comment.
ampdepolymerase 5y ago
A lot of big countries have significant interests in preventing smaller states from acquiring nuclear arms. It is difficult to say how much of the FUD around civilian nuclear power was planted on purpose by governments.
Buttons840 5y ago
Great book. One of the chapters is named "The US government almost never lost nuclear weapons" if I remember correctly. A glimpse into the author's sense of humor.
- alexgmcm 5y ago
  Yeah, his other book "Atomic Adventures" was recommended to me by my friends and also mentioned in the book "The Future of Fusion Energy" by Parisi and Ball. I'll have to check it out!

qayxc 5y ago

To me this has way too many signs of vapourware: • highly complex technology that has been around for decades, yet the team seems to lack any experienced members (judging from the photo) • no existing solutions are beyond the test/prototype phase • pretty renderings in an unrealistic setting • lots of vague statements regarding the technology, yet they already know that the final product will be housed in stylish buildings (wtf?) I don't have much confidence in this company, but I'd be pleasantly surprised to be shown wrong in a couple of years.

MsMowz 5y ago
What makes you think the setting is unrealistic? And why is it an issue that the housing looks pleasant? I’m sure it won’t look exactly like, but for the types of customers that are in the market for consistent 1.5 MWe at $0.06/KWh (their target), a decent-looking exterior and an ability to be placed in remote settings seem like desirable product features.
- qayxc 5y ago
  > What makes you think the setting is unrealistic? No one in their right mind builds a structure containing a nuclear facility right next to a fully grown tree, for example. If the tree is a spruce, for example, it'd likely be a shallow root tree, meaning not only would the roots penetrate the foundation, it'd also be prone to windthrow - a serious security risk considering the building is housing a nuclear facility. There's also no security measures to be seen in any of the renderings (apart maybe from the tiny fence right next to the fully-developed road). Doesn't spark much confidence in security against proliferation concerns. > And why is it an issue that the housing looks pleasant? The issue isn't what the housing looks like. The issue is that it's mentioned at all given the current stage of development. Just to clarify: the company has been around for 8 years and isn't licensed to even produce prototype reactors yet. Compare this to some of the competition mentioned in the article: • Elysium Industries (just as small, ~6 years old) [0] features a CAD rendering of their reactor design front and centre • HolosGen [1] features a detailed CAD rendering of their reactor design on the landing page and includes tons of reference material • NuGen, founded in 2006 [2] - which is basically a two-person operation with an office in what looks like an apartment building in a residential area [3] - features a CAD rendering of their reactor on their homepage, plus related patents • XEnergy [4], founded in 2009 and a little bigger, features CAD renderings of both the reactor design and the fuel cells on their landing page General Atomics - another competitor mentioned in the article - is too big and thus not a fair comparison, which is why I left them out. I hope you start to notice a pattern here. No matter how small and unimpressive these companies might seem at first glance, all of them focus on the actual technology behind their product and that's what they put at the centre of their presentation. Oklo, OTOH, doesn't do any of that. I understand that they're in "stealth mode" or whatever, but if you do a CNBC interview and the press material you bring consists of a neat house in a boreal forest with a tree right next to the roof of a nuclear facility and no security measures to be seen anywhere, I call BS on that. Security concerns are handwaved away without even addressing the point (are the reactors that “operate without security forces and have impeccable security records over many decades.” also found in remote locations?), regulatory obstacles and poor economics aren't addressed either, but instead the reactors will be housed in “aesthetically pleasing” structures - as if anyone cares if they are intended to be located in remote locations, fenced away and obviously surrounded by forest or desert... [0] http://www.elysiumindustries.com http://www.elysiumindustries.com [1] http://www.holosgen.com http://www.holosgen.com [2] https://www.nucdev.com https://www.nucdev.com [3] https://bit.ly/2SI9yVK https://bit.ly/2SI9yVK (Google Street View of the principal office according to the latest business report filed with the North Carolina Secretary of State) [4] https://x-energy.com https://x-energy.com

yellow_lead 5y ago

The article mentions they want to have these reactors unguarded and running without a human present. It seems dangerous to me, but at least for the security portion, I could imagine some kind of physical barriers and camera setup that would allow it. As for having no maintenance person there, I think it's a bit more risky.

shadilay 5y ago

Not to be confused with Onkalo the spent nuclear fuel disposal site. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...

monocasa 5y ago

I thought fast reactors were de facto banned in the US for civilian uses because of the proliferation concerns of the plutonium generated? Maybe this is exposing the extent of my knowledge and not all fast reactors are breeder reactors?

acidburnNSA 5y ago
It is commonly stated that 'recycling nuclear fuel was banned by Jimmy Carter and remains banned to this day'. While Jimmy Carter did put a moratorium on it in 1977, Regan actually lifted it in '81 [1]. [1] http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2014/ph241/parekh2/docs/RS22542.pdf http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2014/ph241/parekh2/docs/RS...

ngcc_hk 5y ago

Do not worry. If USA stop it. These will go to china. And got it developed. Without regulation or worry. We are fine!

dragonwriter 5y ago
China has no regulations? That...seems kinda wrong.

dtgriscom 5y ago

When I read that the plants are "still several years off", and the most promoted feature (shown in three out of four images) is the "A-frame structures that are aesthetically pleasing", my skepticism went off the charts.