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I think it is probably a bad reactor and a questionable company. 1. The company is totally opaque on even basic design details. This is not ghost mode. It's li

I think it is probably a bad reactor and a questionable company. 1. The company is totally opaque on even basic design details. This is not ghost mode. It's likely hiding incompetence and lack of design work / maturity. 2. It's a fast reactor so lots of high energy neutrons that will cause faster material degradation, higher maintenance cost, more downtime - the economics for fast reactors have never worked (not even in Russia or China), and this is probably why fusion reactors will never be economical (32x greater neutronicity). 3. It has terrible fuel utilization: 1% burn-up of fuel, with 100 metric tons uranium / GWe-year compared to 5-10% in other normal and advanced reactors. 4. The founders lie to congress claiming their reactor “can consume the used fuel from today’s reactors” when each reactor is actually going to require 3 tons of pretty pristine HALEU... 5. The founders peddle some serious BS (bitcoin mining, TED talks ... etc) not unlike the other great MIT nuclear startup Transatomic. 6. NRC really went out of their way to publicly reject this with press release and all. This was not done lightly to a company often featured in the WSJ and Popular Mechanics. 7. I'm disturbed by the way they talk about their reactor as a "community meeting place" with their modern glass A-frame without any power generating equipment. Is there going to be a daycare center or country club in there? Where the hell are the cooling towers? I'm all for nuclear power, but we shouldn't be down playing the seriousness of nuclear power systems.

hairytrog 5y ago
- spiderice 5y ago
  > Seems like you have an ax to grind I don't feel like this is at all a fair or appropriate response to GP. They all seemed like very valid points. Which points fall under the "grinding an axe" category, as opposed to "valid criticism" category?
  - hairytrog 5y ago
    Point 2 is highly debatable. DOE is funding TerraPower's Natrium (Bill Gates company) which is a fast reactor, to the tune of 2.5B as part of the Advanced Reactor Demo Program. So a lot of people in the industry believe fast reactors can be commercially viable.
    - Sniffnoy 5y ago
      People being wrong about things is not a reason to accuse them of acting in bad faith.
- gloriana 5y ago
  I mean, I am just criticizing the founders and company based on the information available - which isn't much, but it's their fault. They seem to have a lot of press coverage for an empty landing page, and a lot of it is unreasonably glowing.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    Also, it’s far from unusual for someone to find a given company suspicious and go digging to find out more and produce public reports or comments questioning their validity. That’s not “axe to grind” and more “amateur investigative journalism”.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Oklo_inc 5y ago
    Please feel free to reference a list of Oklo press releases here: https://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/search/?searchType=all&searchTerm=oklo%20inc&searchPage=1 https://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/search/?search...
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mlindner 5y ago
In Fusion reactors the neutrons are used to breed Tritium from the Lithium so they're not hitting the structure and degrading it.
- hairytrog 5y ago
  Not quite. 80% of the energy in D-T fusion reactions are released as neutron energy. I sure hope most of that will be used for generating electrical power rather than breeding tritium... :) The dpa rates and helium embrittlement are way higher for fusion and fast fission reactors than for thermal fission reactors. See Figure 3 and 5 of https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-matsci-070813-113627?casa_token=g6SRx3QSdlgAAAAA:XS7h5izCPupqHSUDSeKudH90tPNVmfOMBFq4WibPX5wHMyb6utJd6dLRhddh8JI2JJfiWRPpkaiI8w https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-matsci...
  - marcosdumay 5y ago
    You have to absorb the neutrons to capture that energy, so you will always have to deal with transmutation. You can't choose one or the other. On this case, the lithium absorbs the neutrons and convert most of the energy into heat, while it becomes tritium.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- pfdietz 5y ago
  So, we have half a meter of lithium just sitting there, not contained in any structure?
PaulHoule 5y ago
Look to FFTF for a completely successful fast reactor run in the U.S. that was unfortunately shut down for political reasons that, retrospectively, look like a terrible mistake. One of the most interesting features of the FFTF was a sodium-to-air heat exchanger which is a key to fast reactors having superior economics. That is, no nuclear reactor which uses a steam turbine is going to be economically competitive with fossil fuel fired gas turbine generators. Between the absolutely huge and massive steam turbine and absolutely huge and massive heat exchangers (look at how big the steam generators are in the PWR or the huge tube-in-shell heat exchanger used at Dounreay) A closed cycle gas turbine will fit in the employee break room of the turbine house of a conventional LWR. It requires some kind of reactor that runs at a higher temperature than the LWR. I like fast reactors and molten salts but have a hard time being enthusiastic about HTGR and friends. So much of the literature still looks like a stopped clock. People still compare nuclear to coal although coal has been economic for a long time for the same reason as the LWR... The cost of that huge steam turbine. Problems with fast reactors I worry about are the fear of proliferation (not proliferation) constricting what you can use for fuel and (more so) the plutonium nanoparticle problem w/ MOX fabrication. Of course you don't need to use MOX or you'd think in 2022 you could use 100% remote handling and not have the problems that Karen Silkwood was worried about at the place where she worked.
- xyzzyz 5y ago
  > One of the most interesting features of the FFTF was a sodium-to-air heat exchanger which is a key to fast reactors having superior economics. > That is, no nuclear reactor which uses a steam turbine is going to be economically competitive with fossil fuel fired gas turbine generators. OK, but FFTF reactor has not generated electricity at all. How is “sodium to air heat exchanger” supposed to generate electricity, to make it more economical than steam turbines? > That is, no nuclear reactor which uses a steam turbine is going to be economically competitive with fossil fuel fired gas turbine generators. That’s highly likely to be true (at least until cheap gas runs out, which will happen at some point, though it will take many decades/centuries until then), but I thought we are aiming to get off fossil fuels, no? We should be willing to pay some premium for nuclear, because it does not emit GHG.
Sniffnoy 5y ago
> 2. It's a fast reactor so lots of high energy neutrons that will cause faster material degradation, higher maintenance cost, more downtime - the economics for fast reactors have never worked (not even in Russia or China), and this is probably why fusion reactors will never be economical (32x greater neutronicity). Commonwealth Fusion Systems's ARC has an interesting approach to handling this -- using a liquid blanket which can be circulated. Of course, ARC isn't built yet! But if that approach is workable, perhaps it can be applied more generally?
- gloriana 5y ago
  I believe it has to be replaced every 4 years of operation as intermediate level radioactive waste.
  - irq 5y ago
    Does it produce less waste than a fast reactor without the liquid blanket?
    - petre 5y ago
      The replaced blanket itself is waste, so I'd venture to say no?
  - lambdatronics 5y ago
    CFS claims that it's manageable, although I don't know enough to evaluate that claim. It's also not clear from this quote if the once/twice per year is referring to full replacement of the vacuum vessel, or maybe just to inspection or replacement of a subset of components. "Bob Mumgaard, CEO of Commomwealth Fusion Systems, regards neutron flux as part of a fusion power plant’s wear-and-tear—a routine aspect of its servicing cycle, happening perhaps once or twice a year. “We can simplify the internal components, develop maintenance scenarios,” he says. “We have such a scheme substantially in place.”" https://nautil.us/issue/86/energy/the-road-less-traveled-to-fusion-energy https://nautil.us/issue/86/energy/the-road-less-traveled-to-...
roenxi 5y ago
Well we're all creatures of opinion; but there is a lot here without much real backing. We have a similar post on tech forums for almost every company from Apple to ... I can't think of a company name starting with Z, Volkswagen will have to do. And pretty much every startup if someone cares to look in to them. Cynicism is extremely easy. Every company looks dodgy from the outside and most of them are dodgy. Many such posts turn out to be correct. But that is because cynicism is misplaced - the point of these startups is that some of them will, despite looking dodgy, turn out to be keystones for trillions of dollars of industrial success. The upside of a serious energy revolution completely outweighs any of these points raised. There needs to be a way for dodgy-looking startups to experiment without just getting a "nah, this year's work is a write off. Oh well lol" from regulators.
- ScarletEmerald 5y ago
  > from Apple to ... I can't think of a company name starting with Z Zeppelin? :) https://zeppelin-nt.de/en/homepage.html https://zeppelin-nt.de/en/homepage.html
  - hodgesrm 5y ago
    That's cool! Nice pictures and a couple good videos of the Zeppelin in flight. I was a bit disappointed not to see any ads for beer on the side of the Zeppelins. Seemed like a marketing miss.
  - chi_handshake 5y ago
    Zbiotics! https://zbiotics.com/ https://zbiotics.com/
- lifeisstillgood 5y ago
  I completely agree - but let's call it scientific research not startups. Startups are about industrialising existing working processes. What we are missing here is the multiple different funded experiments that take the different combinations of salts, heat exchangers and so on and come up with "hey this one works best" - make these. Funding these experiments through VC is just asking for bias and PR not empirical results. In short, if the government was running 100+ experimental reactors, this press release would be "whoops, 99 to go" and not even create a stir. It's only because there is 100M at stake is anyone fighting back.
morning_gelato 5y ago
> the economics for fast reactors have never worked (not even in Russia or China) Russia currently has two sodium-cooled fast reactors that are producing power, the BN-600 and BN-800. They also have another sodium reactor under development, the BN-1200. BREST-OD-300, a lead-cooled fast reactor, is under construction as well.
- apendleton 5y ago
  But those don't have to be economical purely on power generation, right, because they also produce Pu-239? Presumably fast breeder reactors would be useful to the Russian state even if they didn't produce electricity at all...
  - morning_gelato 5y ago
    There's no evidence that they are being used to breed plutonium. In fact the BN-800 burns a mixture of uranium and plutonium to reduce their weapons stockpile.
    - baybal2 5y ago
      They have RBMKs which will produce 10 times that, and more cheaply.
  - petre 5y ago
    They went bankrupt with their arsenal once, so I'd argue it would be more useful to their rivals.
khazhoux 5y ago
> I'm disturbed by the way they talk about their reactor as a "community meeting place" with their modern glass A-frame without any power generating equipment I'll submit that a nuclear startup that presents such a stylish Architectural Digest concept for its facilities, that by itself is enough for us to be extremely skeptical of the leadership team. Their head is in the wrong place. You will counter-argue that it takes little effort for them to hire an artist-designer to create the rendering. Nonetheless: their head is in the wrong place. They're not reading the room. None of us (not the public and not the NRC) are looking for a new alpine lodge to grab an espresso. We basically just care that you don't blow up and you don't poison the land, water, and air around you. If leadership spend any cycles to spend on hiring a stylish designer, then their priorities aren't straight.
- staticassertion 5y ago
  Presumably they're trying to shift the image of a nuclear plant from "dangerous, not in my backyard" to something more friendly and appealing.
  - petre 5y ago
    NuScale Power's choice of communicating this seems a lot better. By contrast this is just like rendered images of hipster micro lodges in the mountains. For a nuclear reactor. A glass metal frame structure? It doesn't inspire safety at all. In the mountains? An avalanche could raze this structure in the blink of an eye.
    - donttrustatoms 5y ago
      It's a good thing then that we analyzed to such extreme events as completely losing everything above ground, whether due to an avalanche, a tornado, an earthquake, etc, etc. :) The inherent safety in the fuel type means that there would still be zero dose. (for more info on the tests that showed this result originally in historic research reactors in operation: http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/pdfs/PlentifulEnergy.pdf http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/pdfs/PlentifulEnergy.pdf) PS I realized that you thought the structure was glass. No wonder. It's not, it's steel panels. Modular construction. There are optional solar panels on the exterior, maybe that's what you saw.
johnshelton 5y ago
Oklo has hundreds of pages of information on safety and all kinds of details of their design that is fully public. To say they’re hiding something is ridiculous and disengenuous. Don’t claim they are lying to Congress about being able to reuse waste. You are the one who is blatantly lying about this to the point I wonder who’s paying you? It does not require “pristine haleu”- the very first reactor is using waste from Idaho National Labs. The DOE and Oklo are also working together on a waste-to-fuel factory as a second project. The fact you’d make up this information is reason enough to question both your motives and the entirety of your post. Transatomic is nonexistent and Oklo chose not to work with them for a reason. They are quite different. You also clearly don’t know anything about the NRC and their dealings with this company; they are working with Oklo currently on approval process. Again, you seem uninformed on this company and their tech; the entire thing is small and on shutdown creates only as much heat as a riding lawnmower. So yes- there can be a country club or a daycare or whatever else you want to put on top. That’s part of why it’s so safe and needs to be approved. I question that you’re actually for nuclear power at all; if you are, stop making up lies about a revolutionary company working to solve our energy crisis.
- shkkmo 5y ago
  Engaging in personal attacks is not the way to fight disinformation. This comment will likely be down voted and flagged into oblivion. Take a look here for guidelines on how to comment on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - johnshelton 5y ago
    Excuse me- they are the ones claiming this company is lying to Congress, which they are not, and this person has zero proof of. In no way was I personally attacking- I am correcting their blatant lie. You should be standing up against a commenter making up lies about a small company in a huge space that’s doing amazing work.
    - shkkmo 5y ago
      > You should be standing up against a commenter making up lies I am trying to help you understand how to do that effectively yourself given that you appear to be new to the site (given your account age) and unfamiliar how to effectively communicate in this community. People are frequently factually wrong. You will be more effective at correcting those factual errors if your tone remains civil, focused on facts and especially if you provide good citations to back up your corrections. Additionally, calling out people as shills is specifically discouraged here as it does not lead to productive discussions. If you are concerned that someone is a shill, you should send an email to the HN moderators as they do investigate. This is also explained the the guidelines (which really are worth reading.): > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
MelissaColette 5y ago
donttrustatoms 5y ago
Hey Gloriana, I'm sure PR experts would say I'm probably not making a good decision responding here, and I haven't even had anything to drink, but I'll take a stab at sharing a bit on each of your points. I hope this response will be taken in the good faith in which it is given. 1) There's certainly many hundreds of pages/slides in the fully public docket on the NRC website, but the easiest source for the most information in one place is our application itself: bit.ly/AuroraCOLA. I don't expect anyone to want to read that entire thing either, but it's there. The only main things that are withheld are generally either: export controlled (defined by the Department of Energy, and we take it seriously) which includes detailed core maps, or security-related information (defined by the NRC). But the rest of it is all there. If there's something you want to know that isn't there, I'm happy to respond. 2) We are building our designs off the 30 years of experience and data with EBR-II and other fast reactors (http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/pdfs/PlentifulEnergy.pdf http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/pdfs/PlentifulEnergy.pdf). EBR-II was ended prematurely for political reasons and had plenty of life left. The EBR-II showed how electricity could be put on the grid with higher uptimes than even the commercial fleet at the time. Unfortunately, I can't give details, but let's just say other major developers of historical fast reactors didn't release their economics because they didn't want it to cannibalize their other plants. But you don't need to believe that either. Our business model is to provide power via PPA so if the economics don't work for the customer we simply won't have a deal. Our FOAK plants are economic already in remote or higher cost areas, but the real key to our economics is when we are able to recycle existing waste, a fact unique to fast reactors. 3) 1% was really to be conservative for the FOAK, to try to make the licensing of the FOAK simpler within the datasets we had. I assume you know a number of SFRs have worked toward establishing datasets for up to and beyond 15% burnup. I really don't know where the number of 100 MT of uranium comes from. We would have <5MT total of fuel for 20 years, with <1T of that being uranium. 1.5MWex24hrx350days/yrx20 years is something like 250 GWe? 4) Oof. Yes, fast reactors can consume the fuel from today's reactors, and even though that supply chain isn't established, the FOAK is using waste fuel from EBR-II. I can assure you it is not pristine. No one else wants it. :) But we are working together with the DOE on a project with Argonne National Lab to begin work on the recycling from today's reactors (https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-announces-over-65-million-public-and-private-funding-commercialize-promising-energy https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-announces-over-65-millio...). 5) Hm. well, I want to be positive here: I'd argue there's a difference between our first customer announcement being Compass and a TEDx with my alma mater, and moving forward for years with something that fellow students and professors said had fundamental issues since grad school, which a professor finally leaked to the press out of frustration (and yes, we might have been fellow students). It's funny, I always said we should never do a TED too because they seem so smarmy, but a friend at my undergrad and the students there were organizing a TEDx and honestly it was cute and was just a fun opportunity to go back there for various reasons. We've been working with other more traditional customers in ways that we can't announce yet. But, we are working with other customers you'll likely approve of more. Remote communities as well as big companies just truly do need reliable power and they do want it to be emission-free. 6. They did seem to go out of their way didn't they. More will come on this once we are able to put out our own account too after 30 days, just because we should have the opportunity to set the record as well. But, to put myself in their shoes, they are trying to defend against an appeal or legal action. Neither of which we really have interest in, we just want to try again, move forward. 7. I responded to this with Paul. TL;DR: I don't think an attractive and functional building with all required security and operational characteristics means we are "down playing the seriousness." If you've been out to these truly poor, remote communities in the Arctic circle as I have, you'll see why they care about having heated, lighted, indoor areas in the long winters. And when the analysis shows the safety and security required, why wouldn't we offer that to them? Well, there you go. Feel free to pick it apart but hopefully it added some context to the press releases and pretty pictures and whatnot.

hairytrog 5y ago

spiderice 5y ago
> Seems like you have an ax to grind I don't feel like this is at all a fair or appropriate response to GP. They all seemed like very valid points. Which points fall under the "grinding an axe" category, as opposed to "valid criticism" category?
- hairytrog 5y ago
  Point 2 is highly debatable. DOE is funding TerraPower's Natrium (Bill Gates company) which is a fast reactor, to the tune of 2.5B as part of the Advanced Reactor Demo Program. So a lot of people in the industry believe fast reactors can be commercially viable.
  - Sniffnoy 5y ago
    People being wrong about things is not a reason to accuse them of acting in bad faith.
gloriana 5y ago
I mean, I am just criticizing the founders and company based on the information available - which isn't much, but it's their fault. They seem to have a lot of press coverage for an empty landing page, and a lot of it is unreasonably glowing.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  Also, it’s far from unusual for someone to find a given company suspicious and go digging to find out more and produce public reports or comments questioning their validity. That’s not “axe to grind” and more “amateur investigative journalism”.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Oklo_inc 5y ago
  Please feel free to reference a list of Oklo press releases here: https://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/search/?searchType=all&searchTerm=oklo%20inc&searchPage=1 https://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/search/?search...

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mlindner 5y ago

In Fusion reactors the neutrons are used to breed Tritium from the Lithium so they're not hitting the structure and degrading it.

hairytrog 5y ago
Not quite. 80% of the energy in D-T fusion reactions are released as neutron energy. I sure hope most of that will be used for generating electrical power rather than breeding tritium... :) The dpa rates and helium embrittlement are way higher for fusion and fast fission reactors than for thermal fission reactors. See Figure 3 and 5 of https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-matsci-070813-113627?casa_token=g6SRx3QSdlgAAAAA:XS7h5izCPupqHSUDSeKudH90tPNVmfOMBFq4WibPX5wHMyb6utJd6dLRhddh8JI2JJfiWRPpkaiI8w https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-matsci...
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  You have to absorb the neutrons to capture that energy, so you will always have to deal with transmutation. You can't choose one or the other. On this case, the lithium absorbs the neutrons and convert most of the energy into heat, while it becomes tritium.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
pfdietz 5y ago
So, we have half a meter of lithium just sitting there, not contained in any structure?

PaulHoule 5y ago

Look to FFTF for a completely successful fast reactor run in the U.S. that was unfortunately shut down for political reasons that, retrospectively, look like a terrible mistake. One of the most interesting features of the FFTF was a sodium-to-air heat exchanger which is a key to fast reactors having superior economics. That is, no nuclear reactor which uses a steam turbine is going to be economically competitive with fossil fuel fired gas turbine generators. Between the absolutely huge and massive steam turbine and absolutely huge and massive heat exchangers (look at how big the steam generators are in the PWR or the huge tube-in-shell heat exchanger used at Dounreay) A closed cycle gas turbine will fit in the employee break room of the turbine house of a conventional LWR. It requires some kind of reactor that runs at a higher temperature than the LWR. I like fast reactors and molten salts but have a hard time being enthusiastic about HTGR and friends. So much of the literature still looks like a stopped clock. People still compare nuclear to coal although coal has been economic for a long time for the same reason as the LWR... The cost of that huge steam turbine. Problems with fast reactors I worry about are the fear of proliferation (not proliferation) constricting what you can use for fuel and (more so) the plutonium nanoparticle problem w/ MOX fabrication. Of course you don't need to use MOX or you'd think in 2022 you could use 100% remote handling and not have the problems that Karen Silkwood was worried about at the place where she worked.

xyzzyz 5y ago
> One of the most interesting features of the FFTF was a sodium-to-air heat exchanger which is a key to fast reactors having superior economics. > That is, no nuclear reactor which uses a steam turbine is going to be economically competitive with fossil fuel fired gas turbine generators. OK, but FFTF reactor has not generated electricity at all. How is “sodium to air heat exchanger” supposed to generate electricity, to make it more economical than steam turbines? > That is, no nuclear reactor which uses a steam turbine is going to be economically competitive with fossil fuel fired gas turbine generators. That’s highly likely to be true (at least until cheap gas runs out, which will happen at some point, though it will take many decades/centuries until then), but I thought we are aiming to get off fossil fuels, no? We should be willing to pay some premium for nuclear, because it does not emit GHG.

Sniffnoy 5y ago

> 2. It's a fast reactor so lots of high energy neutrons that will cause faster material degradation, higher maintenance cost, more downtime - the economics for fast reactors have never worked (not even in Russia or China), and this is probably why fusion reactors will never be economical (32x greater neutronicity). Commonwealth Fusion Systems's ARC has an interesting approach to handling this -- using a liquid blanket which can be circulated. Of course, ARC isn't built yet! But if that approach is workable, perhaps it can be applied more generally?

gloriana 5y ago
I believe it has to be replaced every 4 years of operation as intermediate level radioactive waste.
- irq 5y ago
  Does it produce less waste than a fast reactor without the liquid blanket?
  - petre 5y ago
    The replaced blanket itself is waste, so I'd venture to say no?
- lambdatronics 5y ago
  CFS claims that it's manageable, although I don't know enough to evaluate that claim. It's also not clear from this quote if the once/twice per year is referring to full replacement of the vacuum vessel, or maybe just to inspection or replacement of a subset of components. "Bob Mumgaard, CEO of Commomwealth Fusion Systems, regards neutron flux as part of a fusion power plant’s wear-and-tear—a routine aspect of its servicing cycle, happening perhaps once or twice a year. “We can simplify the internal components, develop maintenance scenarios,” he says. “We have such a scheme substantially in place.”" https://nautil.us/issue/86/energy/the-road-less-traveled-to-fusion-energy https://nautil.us/issue/86/energy/the-road-less-traveled-to-...

roenxi 5y ago

Well we're all creatures of opinion; but there is a lot here without much real backing. We have a similar post on tech forums for almost every company from Apple to ... I can't think of a company name starting with Z, Volkswagen will have to do. And pretty much every startup if someone cares to look in to them. Cynicism is extremely easy. Every company looks dodgy from the outside and most of them are dodgy. Many such posts turn out to be correct. But that is because cynicism is misplaced - the point of these startups is that some of them will, despite looking dodgy, turn out to be keystones for trillions of dollars of industrial success. The upside of a serious energy revolution completely outweighs any of these points raised. There needs to be a way for dodgy-looking startups to experiment without just getting a "nah, this year's work is a write off. Oh well lol" from regulators.

ScarletEmerald 5y ago
> from Apple to ... I can't think of a company name starting with Z Zeppelin? :) https://zeppelin-nt.de/en/homepage.html https://zeppelin-nt.de/en/homepage.html
- hodgesrm 5y ago
  That's cool! Nice pictures and a couple good videos of the Zeppelin in flight. I was a bit disappointed not to see any ads for beer on the side of the Zeppelins. Seemed like a marketing miss.
- chi_handshake 5y ago
  Zbiotics! https://zbiotics.com/ https://zbiotics.com/
lifeisstillgood 5y ago
I completely agree - but let's call it scientific research not startups. Startups are about industrialising existing working processes. What we are missing here is the multiple different funded experiments that take the different combinations of salts, heat exchangers and so on and come up with "hey this one works best" - make these. Funding these experiments through VC is just asking for bias and PR not empirical results. In short, if the government was running 100+ experimental reactors, this press release would be "whoops, 99 to go" and not even create a stir. It's only because there is 100M at stake is anyone fighting back.

morning_gelato 5y ago

> the economics for fast reactors have never worked (not even in Russia or China) Russia currently has two sodium-cooled fast reactors that are producing power, the BN-600 and BN-800. They also have another sodium reactor under development, the BN-1200. BREST-OD-300, a lead-cooled fast reactor, is under construction as well.

apendleton 5y ago
But those don't have to be economical purely on power generation, right, because they also produce Pu-239? Presumably fast breeder reactors would be useful to the Russian state even if they didn't produce electricity at all...
- morning_gelato 5y ago
  There's no evidence that they are being used to breed plutonium. In fact the BN-800 burns a mixture of uranium and plutonium to reduce their weapons stockpile.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    They have RBMKs which will produce 10 times that, and more cheaply.
- petre 5y ago
  They went bankrupt with their arsenal once, so I'd argue it would be more useful to their rivals.

khazhoux 5y ago

> I'm disturbed by the way they talk about their reactor as a "community meeting place" with their modern glass A-frame without any power generating equipment I'll submit that a nuclear startup that presents such a stylish Architectural Digest concept for its facilities, that by itself is enough for us to be extremely skeptical of the leadership team. Their head is in the wrong place. You will counter-argue that it takes little effort for them to hire an artist-designer to create the rendering. Nonetheless: their head is in the wrong place. They're not reading the room. None of us (not the public and not the NRC) are looking for a new alpine lodge to grab an espresso. We basically just care that you don't blow up and you don't poison the land, water, and air around you. If leadership spend any cycles to spend on hiring a stylish designer, then their priorities aren't straight.

staticassertion 5y ago
Presumably they're trying to shift the image of a nuclear plant from "dangerous, not in my backyard" to something more friendly and appealing.
- petre 5y ago
  NuScale Power's choice of communicating this seems a lot better. By contrast this is just like rendered images of hipster micro lodges in the mountains. For a nuclear reactor. A glass metal frame structure? It doesn't inspire safety at all. In the mountains? An avalanche could raze this structure in the blink of an eye.
  - donttrustatoms 5y ago
    It's a good thing then that we analyzed to such extreme events as completely losing everything above ground, whether due to an avalanche, a tornado, an earthquake, etc, etc. :) The inherent safety in the fuel type means that there would still be zero dose. (for more info on the tests that showed this result originally in historic research reactors in operation: http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/pdfs/PlentifulEnergy.pdf http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/pdfs/PlentifulEnergy.pdf) PS I realized that you thought the structure was glass. No wonder. It's not, it's steel panels. Modular construction. There are optional solar panels on the exterior, maybe that's what you saw.

johnshelton 5y ago

Oklo has hundreds of pages of information on safety and all kinds of details of their design that is fully public. To say they’re hiding something is ridiculous and disengenuous. Don’t claim they are lying to Congress about being able to reuse waste. You are the one who is blatantly lying about this to the point I wonder who’s paying you? It does not require “pristine haleu”- the very first reactor is using waste from Idaho National Labs. The DOE and Oklo are also working together on a waste-to-fuel factory as a second project. The fact you’d make up this information is reason enough to question both your motives and the entirety of your post. Transatomic is nonexistent and Oklo chose not to work with them for a reason. They are quite different. You also clearly don’t know anything about the NRC and their dealings with this company; they are working with Oklo currently on approval process. Again, you seem uninformed on this company and their tech; the entire thing is small and on shutdown creates only as much heat as a riding lawnmower. So yes- there can be a country club or a daycare or whatever else you want to put on top. That’s part of why it’s so safe and needs to be approved. I question that you’re actually for nuclear power at all; if you are, stop making up lies about a revolutionary company working to solve our energy crisis.

shkkmo 5y ago
Engaging in personal attacks is not the way to fight disinformation. This comment will likely be down voted and flagged into oblivion. Take a look here for guidelines on how to comment on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- johnshelton 5y ago
  Excuse me- they are the ones claiming this company is lying to Congress, which they are not, and this person has zero proof of. In no way was I personally attacking- I am correcting their blatant lie. You should be standing up against a commenter making up lies about a small company in a huge space that’s doing amazing work.
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    > You should be standing up against a commenter making up lies I am trying to help you understand how to do that effectively yourself given that you appear to be new to the site (given your account age) and unfamiliar how to effectively communicate in this community. People are frequently factually wrong. You will be more effective at correcting those factual errors if your tone remains civil, focused on facts and especially if you provide good citations to back up your corrections. Additionally, calling out people as shills is specifically discouraged here as it does not lead to productive discussions. If you are concerned that someone is a shill, you should send an email to the HN moderators as they do investigate. This is also explained the the guidelines (which really are worth reading.): > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.

MelissaColette 5y ago

donttrustatoms 5y ago

Hey Gloriana, I'm sure PR experts would say I'm probably not making a good decision responding here, and I haven't even had anything to drink, but I'll take a stab at sharing a bit on each of your points. I hope this response will be taken in the good faith in which it is given. 1) There's certainly many hundreds of pages/slides in the fully public docket on the NRC website, but the easiest source for the most information in one place is our application itself: bit.ly/AuroraCOLA. I don't expect anyone to want to read that entire thing either, but it's there. The only main things that are withheld are generally either: export controlled (defined by the Department of Energy, and we take it seriously) which includes detailed core maps, or security-related information (defined by the NRC). But the rest of it is all there. If there's something you want to know that isn't there, I'm happy to respond. 2) We are building our designs off the 30 years of experience and data with EBR-II and other fast reactors (http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/pdfs/PlentifulEnergy.pdf http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/pdfs/PlentifulEnergy.pdf). EBR-II was ended prematurely for political reasons and had plenty of life left. The EBR-II showed how electricity could be put on the grid with higher uptimes than even the commercial fleet at the time. Unfortunately, I can't give details, but let's just say other major developers of historical fast reactors didn't release their economics because they didn't want it to cannibalize their other plants. But you don't need to believe that either. Our business model is to provide power via PPA so if the economics don't work for the customer we simply won't have a deal. Our FOAK plants are economic already in remote or higher cost areas, but the real key to our economics is when we are able to recycle existing waste, a fact unique to fast reactors. 3) 1% was really to be conservative for the FOAK, to try to make the licensing of the FOAK simpler within the datasets we had. I assume you know a number of SFRs have worked toward establishing datasets for up to and beyond 15% burnup. I really don't know where the number of 100 MT of uranium comes from. We would have <5MT total of fuel for 20 years, with <1T of that being uranium. 1.5MWex24hrx350days/yrx20 years is something like 250 GWe? 4) Oof. Yes, fast reactors can consume the fuel from today's reactors, and even though that supply chain isn't established, the FOAK is using waste fuel from EBR-II. I can assure you it is not pristine. No one else wants it. :) But we are working together with the DOE on a project with Argonne National Lab to begin work on the recycling from today's reactors (https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-announces-over-65-million-public-and-private-funding-commercialize-promising-energy https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-announces-over-65-millio...). 5) Hm. well, I want to be positive here: I'd argue there's a difference between our first customer announcement being Compass and a TEDx with my alma mater, and moving forward for years with something that fellow students and professors said had fundamental issues since grad school, which a professor finally leaked to the press out of frustration (and yes, we might have been fellow students). It's funny, I always said we should never do a TED too because they seem so smarmy, but a friend at my undergrad and the students there were organizing a TEDx and honestly it was cute and was just a fun opportunity to go back there for various reasons. We've been working with other more traditional customers in ways that we can't announce yet. But, we are working with other customers you'll likely approve of more. Remote communities as well as big companies just truly do need reliable power and they do want it to be emission-free. 6. They did seem to go out of their way didn't they. More will come on this once we are able to put out our own account too after 30 days, just because we should have the opportunity to set the record as well. But, to put myself in their shoes, they are trying to defend against an appeal or legal action. Neither of which we really have interest in, we just want to try again, move forward. 7. I responded to this with Paul. TL;DR: I don't think an attractive and functional building with all required security and operational characteristics means we are "down playing the seriousness." If you've been out to these truly poor, remote communities in the Arctic circle as I have, you'll see why they care about having heated, lighted, indoor areas in the long winters. And when the analysis shows the safety and security required, why wouldn't we offer that to them? Well, there you go. Feel free to pick it apart but hopefully it added some context to the press releases and pretty pictures and whatnot.