11 ms·

UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries

188 points by sama 12y ago

chrissnell 12y ago
Are size and efficiency the most pressing issues to solve in nuclear power? I don't know a thing about nuclear issues but from the layperson's perspective, it seems like security is the biggest problem that keeps nuclear power from being used everywhere. These containers are essentially dirty bombs without detonators and must be protected as such. This might work for the military, where you could secure one on a restricted section of a FOB, but how would this work for a small town in Alaska, as the article suggests? Securing the site is only half of the problem, too. You also have to secure the supply chain for the nuclear material, as well as the disposal. The cost of disposal is another challenge. Imagine the difficulties of transporting the spent fuel from the Alaskan village. These guys have a big challenge ahead of them but it would be quite awesome if they can pull it off. Prime power generation and the supply chain issues that its fuel entails is a huge and extremely expensive problem for the military. If you could safely build this in a CONEX, that would be impressive.
- ahaefner 12y ago
  Commercial power reactors are very expensive initially (multiple billions). This is a huge barrier to entry for most power plants. So the thinking is if the size can be reduced so can the cost. The military is interesting because they already have small reactors in submarines and ships. And they have access to the highest grade fuel because they don't have to follow power plant regulations. So it seems like if these modular reactors would be useful to them, they could easily adapt these reactors for land use. This startup is hard to gauge because there's so few actual details about their design. For example, how are they going to use thorium as a fuel? You can't just use thorium without a strong neutron starter source or some other fuel engineering.
  - jddw 12y ago
    The concept is to start small to overcome cost and regulatory barriers more quickly and for less. And yes, we kick start using thorium with low enriched uranium or spent fuel to build up U233. Then we just keep reusing the thorium fuel over multiple refueling periods without reprocessing or separations until it is depleted.
  - beefman 12y ago
    'It can burn any fuel' is just code for 'we have no real core design yet'. But it doesn't matter, because no nuclear fuel is significantly better than any other, and they're all thousands of times better than alternatives. Thorium is always used in mixed cores. An accelerator-driven thorium reactor will contain uranium from breeding even if no uranium is ever loaded into it.
    - jddw 12y ago
      There are core designs for low enriched uranium loading, mixed thorium loading, and spent fuel loadings. Have to make sure a fuel design works before it's claimed to work.
      - beefman 12y ago
        With 12 years of burnup? I've been having trouble getting burnup codes to handle thorium. What are you using? Apparently I should be using Serpent. But anyway, 12 years is too long, even if it's feasible. Something like 4 years should be better, due to the learning curve on these. For instance, think of a reactor in the field as a ship on a long trip while technology at home continues to improve http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wait_Calculation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wait_Calculation Edit: The lower the enrichment, and the lower the excess reactivity, the better.
- ekianjo 12y ago
  > essentially dirty bombs without detonators and must be protected as such. No, it's completely wrong. That's not how a nuclear plant works. And as you can see, a nuclear plant does not "explode" when it goes amok. The chain reaction is very tightly controlled and there are multiples redundancies in case things don't work as expected.
  - rdl 12y ago
    "dirty bomb" is a radiological weapon, not a fission/fusion weapon, and is exactly what detonating explosives (or H gas, or whatever) inside a commercial power reactor or RTG would be.
    - jjoonathan 12y ago
      Except that a dirty bomb is designed to maximize the hazardous effects of such an event while a reactor is designed to minimize the hazardous effects of such an event.
      - justincormack 12y ago
        No, a dirty bomb is mainly designed to maximize fear, not hazard. Once its gone off, telling people it was safe is probably not going to work very well.
  - damian2000 12y ago
    Except you just have to look at Fukushima to see that things can still go badly wrong, resulting in a meltdown of 3 reactors. And this happened in arguably one of the most tightly regulated and technologically advanced countries in the world.
    - Turing_Machine 12y ago
      1) Massive earthquake, followed by 2) Tsunami, followed by, 3) Complete loss of power to all control systems, followed by, 4) Gas explosions and core meltdown. Pretty much the worst possible scenario, and yet no member of the general public was killed from radiation exposure. Just how safe do you want something to be?
- djb_hackernews 12y ago
  I may be naive, but are there really bad actors lurking the world that a) have the resource to pull off such a crime, b) be able to get away with c) not already have means to get what ever it is they want? To take a stab at your hypothetical situation, the small town in Alaska has multiple armed guards 24/7 as well as centralized offsite monitoring. Protocols in place to alert local authorities which have protocols in place to alert state authorities, etc. The overhead will be covered by excess efficiencies in adopting such a system.
  - jddw 12y ago
    Exactly right. Reactors are not attractive targets and this is very robust.
    - XorNot 12y ago
      More importantly, 9/11 hit the WTC. When it did everyone immediately said "imagine if they'd hit a nuclear reactor". But they didn't. They could've, but they didn't (and it also wouldn't have done very much damage). The reality is that even at the largest conceivable scales, nuclear security as implemented is not threatened by violent terrorism or direct action, so much as leaky side-channels (scientists selling off isotopes on the side).
TheHoffman 12y ago
- Nuclear-powered electricity source - Touted as a "battery" - Solid state - Can be cooled by heatpipes and ambient air - Can use multiple fuels - Cheap - Small I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that they're commercializing a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (or multiple connected in a series), like the ones sitting abandoned all over the former Soviet Union (and occasionally spewing radiation when some fool disassembles them for scrap metal) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_gen... Note that it's also touted as "Always On", probably whether you like it or not, because you can't switch radioactive decay on and off.
- wmf 12y ago
  The article gives the impression that it uses turbines not thermocouples.
- rdtsc 12y ago
  Unrelated but there is a movie that features one of those RTG as an interesting prop in the story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_I_Ended_This_Summer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_I_Ended_This_Summer
- beefman 12y ago
  It's a reactor, not an RTG. One reason I don't like the term "nuclear battery". The term is also annoying here because it's clearly an attempt at spin. The cultural situation with nuclear is beyond spin, and requires direct confrontation.
  - jddw 12y ago
    Yes it is fission like the article says.
  - pjscott 12y ago
    The term "nuclear battery" here refers to the operational model: the modules are shipped out from a factory, hooked up on-site, run with minimal intervention, and then shipped back after several years for refurbishing and refueling. This centralizes construction and maintenance, which is important when the reactors themselves are so small.
LAMike 12y ago
So in 5 years it will be possible to buy a nuclear box that can power 2,000 homes? I bet there will be "startup cities" made from scratch using these containers that will power a small community and help people live off the grid. Sounds like something I'd be down to try out
- mkempe 12y ago
  Think our next frontier -- Martian colonies.
chaostheory 12y ago
I really think it's awesome that all the latest YC backed start ups seem like they can make this world a better place, as opposed to being some electronic variant of "Bread and Circus" (http://jolieodell.wordpress.com/2010/10/07/bread-and-circuses-the-state-of-web-app-startups/ http://jolieodell.wordpress.com/2010/10/07/bread-and-circuse...)
tim333 12y ago
Hmm. 2MW/reactor means you'd need 500 of the things knocking about the country to equal one regular power station. Not that great for keeping things secure.
- jddw 12y ago
  Right, the goal is to start very small, and off grid. Then we scale and grow to grid size.
  - msandford 12y ago
    And there's nothing that would preclude you guys from simulating geothermal with them. 1. Dig down 50-100 feet 2. Make a foundation and catch pan 3. Put in an elevated platform to hold containers 4. Lower 5-50 containers onto elevated platforms 5. Install first order heat exchangers downstairs 6. Put "roof" on 7. Cover with 30 (or more) feet of dirt or whatever you prefer Perhaps install a bridge crane and a shaft to the surface so that you can swap power units out without digging down again. Just make incredibly massive covers (like 10ft thick concrete) without cranes on-site at the surface so that terrorists wouldn't be able to hijack stuff once they made it through the front gate. It might look something like this: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/10/google_data_center_video/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/10/google_data_center_v... The idea of simulating geothermal is that you'll have a bunch of power generation equipment on the surface that runs on heat. It just happens that it's not a "natural" geothermal well but a man-made one.
- donttrustatoms 12y ago
  To elaborate, The idea is that this is our Tesla Roadster to get to disrupt an out of touch industry, and to get to in-pain, in-need markets, and to get through regulation quickly. The next step is the scaled, grid-competitive reactor- our "model E". The first ever commercial reactor was a micro reactor, just 5 MWe, outside San Francisco started by GE. These huge companies have lost their way in innovation and off-grid markets have changed dramatically in recent years. How appropriate is it then for a new Silicon Valley company to start again, disrupting with a new competitive micro reactor...!
guiomie 12y ago
It's really nice to see non web based startups.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  Agreed. I'd written something of a rant on that about seven months back which wasn't particularly well-received at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7063690 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7063690 I do hope to see more Big Problem startups. Even if I'm not much of a fan of nuclear.
beefman 12y ago
I almost pitched a similar reactor in the last YC round, since they asked for energy. I assumed they'd never fund fission because of the crazy regulatory risk, and anyway I wanted to wait until I got a simulation working. I'm glad uPower pitched and succeeded. With the possible exception of Radix/Dunedin, they're the only folks working on appropriate-size reactors today. However, I doubt they'll get 28% thermal efficiency with heat pipes, and I doubt they'll get a 12-year core with pragmatic enrichments.
HarryHirsch 12y ago
Are size and efficiency the most pressing issues to solve in nuclear power? You'd think the greatest problem facing a potential buyer is getting planning permission and insurance. Who wants a nuclear reactor down the road, even if it's a scaled-up TRIGA design? From what thin details are there in the Techcrunch writeup ("spent fuel from it can be reused in another reactor with some processing") it could almost be a pulse reactor, the design is well-understood. Another worry is getting rid of the used fuel rods. With all the 70-odd TRIGAs operating around the world, the United States will take them back, but who can tell with a startup?
dadiomov 12y ago
I studied energy at Stanford and joined the team that spun TerraPower (www.terrapower.com) out of Intellectual Ventures with Bill Gates' backing. I spent a lot of time looking at these nuclear batteries and economically it's very hard to see them working out as anything close to competitive to natural gas, coal, or wind. The amount of security, containment, etc. that you need for a large plant vs. a small plant doesn't vary much, so the costs per kWh don't scale down as you move down in total plant size, they scale up - and the idea as the techcrunch article suggests that you could sell just a "thermal" battery and let the utility or whoever add the actual steam-to-electric conversion on their own is laughable. Utilities don't do anything on their own. I do hope these guys figured out something novel about the economics -- and I certainly applaud YC for going into energy.
- pjscott 12y ago
  They're aiming at niches where they won't be competing directly with more conventional power plants. Their web site claims [1] that it's intended "for remote and distributed generation where energy costs can exceed 30 cents/kWh, and power is needed 24/7". [1] http://www.upowertech.com/p/technology.html http://www.upowertech.com/p/technology.html
  - jddw 12y ago
    Precisely right. Traditional utilities want something with a long operating track record, something hard for new designs to do off the bat. But going where the reactor is 5x cheaper than the next best option changes that. Plus many of these places want combined heat and power, so the design needs to be flexible on the thermal end.
    - dadiomov 12y ago
      there's definitely an opportunity in providing thermal at factories. lots of remote sites in India and China have their own purpose-built coal plants that could potentially use something like that...I have a harder time seeing the financing line up for serving remote villages that can't afford any power today. In those cases finance will always flow to smaller increment technologies, even if they're higher $/kWh, like solar + battery or diesel
omegaworks 12y ago
>with some processing Weasel words. Reprocessing spent nuclear fuel introduces a MASSIVE regulatory boondoggle.
- pjscott 12y ago
  True, but you can always use a once-through fuel cycle at first. EDIT: It turns out that the article was inaccurate, and they won't be reprocessing. Consider this comment happily retracted!
- donttrustatoms 12y ago
  Great, great call to point out. The author very unfortunately did not understand that there is NO "reprocessing" necessary for our reactors to reuse fuel. Why, oh why, don't we get to preview what they write. Wording is so important in such a massively misunderstood space. It is a proven process utilized previously in fuel manufacture, and simply adds a little new fuel to existing used fuel. It does not involving isolating any portions of the fuel as done in reprocessing (which is the main "proliferation hazard" of reprocessing). -COO UPower
  - beefman 12y ago
    Can you be a little more descriptive here? I suspect you really are reprocessing, and shouldn't be afraid to say so.
    - donttrustatoms 12y ago
      In the fuel manufacture for redeployment, it's more or less as simple as melting down and recasting. The distinction is reprocessing is generally way more complicated, frequently involves chemicals, and could separate out plutonium which gets people worried.
jddw 12y ago
Hey HN I'm Jake, one of the co-founders of UPower. Some good discussion here. I've posted a few responses below, happy to answer some questions here. Thanks!
- clarkm 12y ago
  Hey Jake, congrats on S14! I see it's described as a battery -- does this mean you're focusing on keeping everything as small as possible? How small do you think the whole operation can get? Could it fit in a semi truck and be driven around?
rjdagost 12y ago
There is a company called Gen4 Energy (formerly Hyperion Power Generation) that has been pursuing the "nuclear battery" concept for 7 or so years: http://www.gen4energy.com http://www.gen4energy.com Regulatory approval has been elusive, and that's for a team of 30+ year nuclear industry veterans. The challenges in this industry are brutal, I hope UPower has deep enough pockets and extreme patience to shake up the industry.
- beefman 12y ago
  They started with a good-sized design, but have scaled it up a couple times since then. They're no longer in mass-production territory.
  - rjdagost 12y ago
    So Gen4 Energy started with a similar sized "nuclear battery" concept. After burning through many millions of dollars of investment and years of hard work from a highly skilled team, they decide that prospects are better for larger scale reactors. That ought to give these guys food for thought. I hope these guys know something the Gen4 team doesn't, but the basic trajectory UPower on has been followed before without paying dividends.
donttrustatoms 12y ago
I am one of the UPower founders. The key takeaways here are that the main hindrances to novel nuclear are (1) meeting regulatory and safety necessities without huge testing costs, which also require a customer interested in purchasing, and (2) competing with the grid, (3) huge scientific/technical risks if not yet proven. UPower meets these by (1) being small enough to build a very tough, full scale emulator for testing, never before done in nuclear. (2) not competing on the grid, which gives immediate, in need customers which is also necessary for regulatory process to complete in (1). (3) using technologies and materials with decades of experience, in a new way, eliminating the huge uncertainties of many startups you see in the news.
- idlewords 12y ago
  I think the key-est takeaway is the need to persuade people not to be terrified of nuclear energy. That's likely to require an effort on a par with any technical advances you make.
  - donttrustatoms 12y ago
    Great point. It's so true. It's exciting that having nuclear backing from groups like YC help people be less terrified (another nuclear group in YC is Helion!). Some great documentaries like Pandora's Box (on netflix) are helping. And generally, i think people are sometimes just relatively growing "less terrified" of nuclear than global pollution, climate change, ocean acidification etc.
  - beefman 12y ago
    Realizing the cost advantage of fission will change minds pretty quick. Of course there's the catch-22 of being able to do it before their minds are changed. uPower's plan of trying offgrid first may be worth a shot. A little understanding of FUD psychology can help too. Today's nuclear industry flunks on that. Telling people nuclear is safe is a classic mistake. Safety is a feeling, and it's hard to feel safe about things you've never touched and can't even picture. There's virtuous feedback here too -- more reactors around, more people who see them and stop fearing them. A charismatic CEO who can stand on top of a reactor on YouTube can't hurt either.
ihnorton 12y ago
Details are scarce on the website and in the articles I've found, but this seems similar to the 4S project Toshiba has been working on for over a decade [1,2]. Between the full-size plants they've built in Japan, and their acquisition of Westinghouse, Toshiba owns a respectable chunk of the nuclear engineering talent and experience on the planet. It doesn't seem to have gone much further [3] than the last time I read about it. What is UPower going to do differently? Nuclear engineering strikes me as one of those areas where exuberant inexperience and simulation prowess are not selling points. Youngsters work ok for software because (1) business inexperience can be offset by deep technical experience, and then rapid product iterations - both made possible by low entry barriers; and (2) screwing up (most) software has negligible negative externalities. Neither of those apply to nuclear engineering. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_4S http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_4S [2] http://www.toshiba.com/tane/products_4s.jsp http://www.toshiba.com/tane/products_4s.jsp [3] http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/advanced/4s.html http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/advanced/4s.html
- donttrustatoms 12y ago
  The 4S is an order of magnitude larger, uses complicated flow, and has significant materials issues left to prove out. You're absolutely right- this is completely different than high school dropouts coding. How can a startup disrupt a large, established, stodgy industry? For example, I studied automotive engineering before MIT nuclear grad school and worked in marketing for almost every auto manufacturer: how did Tesla do what the Big guys didn't? It always starts with a simple, proven product and a niche market in need/willing to pay a premium. That being said our team does have wide ranging experience. Our CEO worked at GE on their revolutionary reactor they more or less shelved years ago and are now restarting. He served on the board of directors of the American Nuclear Society and has a PhD from MIT. He has seen and worked in the industry from operations of a real reactor to fuel sales to weapons design at national labs to naval reactor design to big industry since high school. The other good news is that the old dudes approve. We will probably soon publish our advisory board including retired regulatory high ups, industry folk who have successfully licensed, and retired high ranking army energy people. We are leveraging the decades of experience of fuel makers and materials experts... It's fun to see the gleam in their eye when they get excited to really build something. Ultimately the question of why hasn't this been done before and wasnt possible before has several clear answers, but no answers for those convinced only large, established, old companies can be in these big spaces ripe for disruption. Maybe they are right, maybe not us, maybe not now. It's not easy but it seems inevitable at some point.
dredmorbius 12y ago
First off: I'm very pleased to see that YC are backing startup concepts other than an endless stream of privacy-invading "social" surveilices, games, and new forms of intrusive and annoying advertising. I'd posted something of a rant on that subject about 7 months ago which didn't go over hugely at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7063690 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7063690 Secondly: this is actually what I'd consider a "Big Problems" start-up, a field which has been notoriously hard to crack. Kleiner Perkins' failure in cleantech over the past 7 year or so has been humbling. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6906635 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6906635 But that said: nuclear's got quite a few issues with it, most particularly the abundance of fuel, and long-term safety. Outside a 6-80 year window in which existing reserves would last (the low-end estimate is "run everything on nuclear", the high is "continue with modest growth at present levels of energy output"), where and/or whether there's enough uranium, plutonium, or thorium to provide energy over the long term is a very real concern. Even beyond that is the safety profile in a world in which a large fraction of human energy production is derived from nuclear power. If _present_ electrical generation needs were to be met, the number of reactors required would grow from the present TK to over 15,000. With a lifetime of 40 years, plus ten years for construction, and 20 for decommissioning, you're looking at bringing a new reactor online, and an old reactor offline, every day. At any given time there would be 3,750 rectors under construction and another 7,500 being decommissioned. Given the US NRC's estimates of 125 paramilitary security personnel per nuclear plant, you'd nave an army, literally, of 1,875,000 security personnel (all highly vetted) worldwide. Not to mention your supply of nuclear engineers and other highly skilled staffing requirements. See Derek Abbott's "Is Nuclear Power Globally Scalable": http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?reload=true&arnumber=06021978 http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?reload=true&arnum... SG Collins, "Nuke Skeptic" http://fixyt.com/watch?v=IHYpYB2vUjM http://fixyt.com/watch?v=IHYpYB2vUjM The video makes a few points, but the primary one is this: Nuclear proponents are, in their beliefs, not essentially more scientific than nuke skeptics. That they're also influenced by ideals and desires, and even persuasion. Discussions of benefits and risks are usually scoped locally: here and now. The civilization that we have right now. That's short-sighted. I'm not fully opposed to nuclear power. But I'm exceptionally skeptical that it will serve us well in the long run. http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2awjj2/thoughts_on_nuclear_energy/ http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2awjj2/thoughts...
svasan 12y ago
As soon as I saw "nuclear", I was put off. Not because I have anything against nuclear power (in fact I am fully convinced of its potential), but because of the way people perceive the word nuclear. Whenever "nuclear" is mentioned, people get negatively predisposed. Case in point - Magnetic Resonance Imaging was initially called Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging. The word nuclear was causing anxiety amongst the patients. The healthcare practitioners dropped nuclear and patients did not mind undergoing the MRI scan. I think a massive rebranding exercise needs to be undertaken while pitching nuclear technologies. It could be atomic technology, it could be some other words that "click" with people as opposed to scaring them off. Unless the psychological battle is won, I am of the opinion that no amount of tech progress would convince people. Perception greatly matters with humans more than the merits of the product/service/technology/initiative. edit - Not sure why this was downvoted. I was against the use of word "nuclear". Not anything else.
sargun 12y ago
This is super exciting. Highly-reliable, off-grid power is amazing. Today, datacenters have to buy massive diesel generators, and ensure they have diesel supplies in case of grid power failure. This infrastructure is surprisingly difficult to maintain. It sounds like UPower's devices are always-on, and although they're not directly competitive with grid power, it sounds significantly simpler to power your datacenter off of N+1 of these devices, and then potentially pump power back into the grid during high-demand, and use the grid during outages of the UPower system, and to bridge periods of maintenance. There are many datacenters that are in not very populated towns. These sound like great places to put generators. Datacenters are everywhere, even in countries with less regulation than the US. I don't know what the export laws are around these "nuclear batteries" (small scale reactors), but I for one am very excited!
Mvandenbergh 12y ago
Three advantages of building very small reactors: 1) Because heat output scales with the cube of the size and passive thermal dissipation scales with the square, small units can be more easily designed to stay within thermal bounds when active cooling fails. 2) One of the biggest cost for nuclear construction is interest costs during the construction process, reducing that time makes a big difference. 3) When you build 20 small units you get 20 chances to make small enhancements and 20 chances to get better and faster at building them. When you build one large unit (which is almost definitely more cost effective on paper) you get one chance to do it and it takes so long that even if you build more than one of the same design, you'll never have the same team building multiple units.
legulere 12y ago
I wonder why nuclear radiation can only be harnessed indirectly through heat. Couldn't things like the photoelectric effect be used for something similar to photovoltaic cells?
kelvin0 12y ago
The idea of a start-up that does not try to re-invent Twitter/Facebook/Flappy Bird is amazing ... I would love to be involved in such an endeavor.
the_solution 12y ago
From the website: "waste products that have to be buried for hundreds of years" Wow, that is... inaccurate. Let's have a look. (EDIT: to clarify, format is substance (% present in used fuel): half life U238 (~94% of used nuclear fuel): ~4.5 billion years Pu (~1% of used nuclear fuel): 24 000 years Sources: http://www.techniklexikon.net/d/abgebrannte_brennelemente/abgebrannte_brennelemente.htm http://www.techniklexikon.net/d/abgebrannte_brennelemente/ab... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Isotope/7._Periode#92_Uran http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Isotope/7._Periode#92...
- cjslep 12y ago
  Just because it is a long-lived radioactive isotope does not mean it is dangerous. I'm referring to U238. It decays by alpha radiation, so unless you are literally eating it or inhaling it, those alpha particles will not penetrate your skin. Additionally, U238's long half life is why it remains as the most plentiful naturally occurring (on Earth) radioactive isotope. I'm tired of people trying to fear-monger radiation by throwing big numbers around. It would be instead be helpful discussing how to get roughly 4 alpha particles to decay per day inside them someone needs to eat roughly 1,000,000,000,000g of pure U238 that day.
  - the_solution 12y ago
    U238 decays to (among others) Polonium which will kill your very fast from inside you body. I think your estimate is off by a few orders of magnitude. Edit: "pure U238" is another point where you go wrong. There is no such thing in nuclear waste, nor will there ever be when it decays. So if i grant you that pure U238 on it's own is not that dangerous, that does absolutely not make nuclear waste less dangerous. The U238 decays to other radioactive substances, then those decay and so on. The long half life of the U238 guarantees that you have a very toxic mix for tens of thousands of years.
    - cjslep 12y ago
      That's what I get trying to balance rough numbers in my head. I was using roughly the number of atoms, not grams. Here's the math laid bare: Frac Remain In 1 Day = 0.5 ^ ((1/365)/4,500,000,000 years) Frac Remain In 1 Day = 0.999999999999578 Frac Decay In 1 Day = 1 - Frac Remain In 1 Day Frac Decay In 1 Day = 4.22 * 10^-13 Have 4 Decays In 1 Day = Total U238 * Frac Decay In 1 Day 4 = Total U238 * 4.22 * 10^-13 4 / (4.22 * 10^-13) = Total U238 Total U238 = 9.48 * 10 ^ 12 atoms I stand corrected, thanks for catching that.
the_solution 12y ago
Quote from http://www.upowertech.com/p/technology.html http://www.upowertech.com/p/technology.html: "carbon-free and emission-free" You're telling me that you get enriched fuel, plant production, transport and waste management (plant and fuel) emission free?!? How do people fall for things like this? "I doesn't produce emissions if you only count the parts that don't produce emissions". Brilliant. And don't even get me started about the super secret "nano-nuclear" tech they claim to have or the cooling using "proprietary technology".
- donttrustatoms 12y ago
  nuclear fuel is 2 million times more energy dense than any other fuel (even more energy dense than that for solar or wind), and this reactor is 30 times more efficient than conventional reactors. that means roughly 2 million times less transportation, less land use and less waste. (Land use comparisons: http://newenergyandfuel.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/LandUseforEnergy-ClintonAndrews.jpg http://newenergyandfuel.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/LandU...) How can we factor in the amount of CO2 removal lost by removal of millions of trees for wind farms? (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10546071/Millions-of-trees-chopped-down-to-make-way-for-Scottish-wind-farms.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10546071/Millions-o...) Or millions less train use in transport of coal? It's a good point though. We should count not just that the reactor itself saves 200,000 tons of CO2 during operation, but also the frequently 10x that of fuel burnt to transport that diesel in conventional generators. So each reactor deployment may save 2 million tons of CO2. Nuclear facilities are also much longer lived than many. Eg solar panel life degrades significantly after a decade. Wind turbines generally have a life of 15 years of so. So that's less concrete, construction, etc. You're right it's tough or impossible to quanitfy. Intuitively, it all comes back to the energy density number. 2 million times more energy dense, no emissions or pollution in operation, and the "waste" is actually useful fuel which produces energy.
  - the_solution 12y ago
    Chopping down trees to make room for wind farms is certainly dumb. If you take a closer look that is yet another story about the dangers of subsidies. "nuclear fuel is 2 million times more energy dense than any other fuel" Citation needed. Also i don't think energy densitiy is what we are looking for here. Remember the thorium car? A drop of water (in principle) also contains all the energy needed to power a car for years. Now if you could just get the H-atoms to fuse... The point is, it matters how much energy you can (efficiently, at all, ...) get out of it. "How can we factor in" - Calculate it. "We should count not just (...) CO2 during operation, but also (...)" Yes, PLEASE make a complete calculation based on solid numbers taking every aspect of the whole lifecycle of a power plant into account INCLUDING fuel production, fuel transportation and waste management. The publish it please.
dredmorbius 12y ago
Is there more detail on just how the energy is being generated here? All I see is "battery" and intimations that there are no working fluids.

188 points by sama 12y ago

Are size and efficiency the most pressing issues to solve in nuclear power? I don't know a thing about nuclear issues but from the layperson's perspective, it seems like security is the biggest problem that keeps nuclear power from being used everywhere. These containers are essentially dirty bombs without detonators and must be protected as such. This might work for the military, where you could secure one on a restricted section of a FOB, but how would this work for a small town in Alaska, as the article suggests? Securing the site is only half of the problem, too. You also have to secure the supply chain for the nuclear material, as well as the disposal. The cost of disposal is another challenge. Imagine the difficulties of transporting the spent fuel from the Alaskan village. These guys have a big challenge ahead of them but it would be quite awesome if they can pull it off. Prime power generation and the supply chain issues that its fuel entails is a huge and extremely expensive problem for the military. If you could safely build this in a CONEX, that would be impressive.

ahaefner 12y ago
Commercial power reactors are very expensive initially (multiple billions). This is a huge barrier to entry for most power plants. So the thinking is if the size can be reduced so can the cost. The military is interesting because they already have small reactors in submarines and ships. And they have access to the highest grade fuel because they don't have to follow power plant regulations. So it seems like if these modular reactors would be useful to them, they could easily adapt these reactors for land use. This startup is hard to gauge because there's so few actual details about their design. For example, how are they going to use thorium as a fuel? You can't just use thorium without a strong neutron starter source or some other fuel engineering.
- jddw 12y ago
  The concept is to start small to overcome cost and regulatory barriers more quickly and for less. And yes, we kick start using thorium with low enriched uranium or spent fuel to build up U233. Then we just keep reusing the thorium fuel over multiple refueling periods without reprocessing or separations until it is depleted.
- beefman 12y ago
  'It can burn any fuel' is just code for 'we have no real core design yet'. But it doesn't matter, because no nuclear fuel is significantly better than any other, and they're all thousands of times better than alternatives. Thorium is always used in mixed cores. An accelerator-driven thorium reactor will contain uranium from breeding even if no uranium is ever loaded into it.
  - jddw 12y ago
    There are core designs for low enriched uranium loading, mixed thorium loading, and spent fuel loadings. Have to make sure a fuel design works before it's claimed to work.
    - beefman 12y ago
      With 12 years of burnup? I've been having trouble getting burnup codes to handle thorium. What are you using? Apparently I should be using Serpent. But anyway, 12 years is too long, even if it's feasible. Something like 4 years should be better, due to the learning curve on these. For instance, think of a reactor in the field as a ship on a long trip while technology at home continues to improve http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wait_Calculation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wait_Calculation Edit: The lower the enrichment, and the lower the excess reactivity, the better.
ekianjo 12y ago
> essentially dirty bombs without detonators and must be protected as such. No, it's completely wrong. That's not how a nuclear plant works. And as you can see, a nuclear plant does not "explode" when it goes amok. The chain reaction is very tightly controlled and there are multiples redundancies in case things don't work as expected.
- rdl 12y ago
  "dirty bomb" is a radiological weapon, not a fission/fusion weapon, and is exactly what detonating explosives (or H gas, or whatever) inside a commercial power reactor or RTG would be.
  - jjoonathan 12y ago
    Except that a dirty bomb is designed to maximize the hazardous effects of such an event while a reactor is designed to minimize the hazardous effects of such an event.
    - justincormack 12y ago
      No, a dirty bomb is mainly designed to maximize fear, not hazard. Once its gone off, telling people it was safe is probably not going to work very well.
- damian2000 12y ago
  Except you just have to look at Fukushima to see that things can still go badly wrong, resulting in a meltdown of 3 reactors. And this happened in arguably one of the most tightly regulated and technologically advanced countries in the world.
  - Turing_Machine 12y ago
    1) Massive earthquake, followed by 2) Tsunami, followed by, 3) Complete loss of power to all control systems, followed by, 4) Gas explosions and core meltdown. Pretty much the worst possible scenario, and yet no member of the general public was killed from radiation exposure. Just how safe do you want something to be?
djb_hackernews 12y ago
I may be naive, but are there really bad actors lurking the world that a) have the resource to pull off such a crime, b) be able to get away with c) not already have means to get what ever it is they want? To take a stab at your hypothetical situation, the small town in Alaska has multiple armed guards 24/7 as well as centralized offsite monitoring. Protocols in place to alert local authorities which have protocols in place to alert state authorities, etc. The overhead will be covered by excess efficiencies in adopting such a system.
- jddw 12y ago
  Exactly right. Reactors are not attractive targets and this is very robust.
  - XorNot 12y ago
    More importantly, 9/11 hit the WTC. When it did everyone immediately said "imagine if they'd hit a nuclear reactor". But they didn't. They could've, but they didn't (and it also wouldn't have done very much damage). The reality is that even at the largest conceivable scales, nuclear security as implemented is not threatened by violent terrorism or direct action, so much as leaky side-channels (scientists selling off isotopes on the side).

TheHoffman 12y ago

- Nuclear-powered electricity source - Touted as a "battery" - Solid state - Can be cooled by heatpipes and ambient air - Can use multiple fuels - Cheap - Small I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that they're commercializing a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (or multiple connected in a series), like the ones sitting abandoned all over the former Soviet Union (and occasionally spewing radiation when some fool disassembles them for scrap metal) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_gen... Note that it's also touted as "Always On", probably whether you like it or not, because you can't switch radioactive decay on and off.

wmf 12y ago
The article gives the impression that it uses turbines not thermocouples.
rdtsc 12y ago
Unrelated but there is a movie that features one of those RTG as an interesting prop in the story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_I_Ended_This_Summer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_I_Ended_This_Summer
beefman 12y ago
It's a reactor, not an RTG. One reason I don't like the term "nuclear battery". The term is also annoying here because it's clearly an attempt at spin. The cultural situation with nuclear is beyond spin, and requires direct confrontation.
- jddw 12y ago
  Yes it is fission like the article says.
- pjscott 12y ago
  The term "nuclear battery" here refers to the operational model: the modules are shipped out from a factory, hooked up on-site, run with minimal intervention, and then shipped back after several years for refurbishing and refueling. This centralizes construction and maintenance, which is important when the reactors themselves are so small.

LAMike 12y ago

So in 5 years it will be possible to buy a nuclear box that can power 2,000 homes? I bet there will be "startup cities" made from scratch using these containers that will power a small community and help people live off the grid. Sounds like something I'd be down to try out

mkempe 12y ago
Think our next frontier -- Martian colonies.

chaostheory 12y ago

I really think it's awesome that all the latest YC backed start ups seem like they can make this world a better place, as opposed to being some electronic variant of "Bread and Circus" (http://jolieodell.wordpress.com/2010/10/07/bread-and-circuses-the-state-of-web-app-startups/ http://jolieodell.wordpress.com/2010/10/07/bread-and-circuse...)

tim333 12y ago

Hmm. 2MW/reactor means you'd need 500 of the things knocking about the country to equal one regular power station. Not that great for keeping things secure.

jddw 12y ago
Right, the goal is to start very small, and off grid. Then we scale and grow to grid size.
- msandford 12y ago
  And there's nothing that would preclude you guys from simulating geothermal with them. 1. Dig down 50-100 feet 2. Make a foundation and catch pan 3. Put in an elevated platform to hold containers 4. Lower 5-50 containers onto elevated platforms 5. Install first order heat exchangers downstairs 6. Put "roof" on 7. Cover with 30 (or more) feet of dirt or whatever you prefer Perhaps install a bridge crane and a shaft to the surface so that you can swap power units out without digging down again. Just make incredibly massive covers (like 10ft thick concrete) without cranes on-site at the surface so that terrorists wouldn't be able to hijack stuff once they made it through the front gate. It might look something like this: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/10/google_data_center_video/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/10/google_data_center_v... The idea of simulating geothermal is that you'll have a bunch of power generation equipment on the surface that runs on heat. It just happens that it's not a "natural" geothermal well but a man-made one.
donttrustatoms 12y ago
To elaborate, The idea is that this is our Tesla Roadster to get to disrupt an out of touch industry, and to get to in-pain, in-need markets, and to get through regulation quickly. The next step is the scaled, grid-competitive reactor- our "model E". The first ever commercial reactor was a micro reactor, just 5 MWe, outside San Francisco started by GE. These huge companies have lost their way in innovation and off-grid markets have changed dramatically in recent years. How appropriate is it then for a new Silicon Valley company to start again, disrupting with a new competitive micro reactor...!

guiomie 12y ago

It's really nice to see non web based startups.

dredmorbius 12y ago
Agreed. I'd written something of a rant on that about seven months back which wasn't particularly well-received at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7063690 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7063690 I do hope to see more Big Problem startups. Even if I'm not much of a fan of nuclear.

beefman 12y ago

I almost pitched a similar reactor in the last YC round, since they asked for energy. I assumed they'd never fund fission because of the crazy regulatory risk, and anyway I wanted to wait until I got a simulation working. I'm glad uPower pitched and succeeded. With the possible exception of Radix/Dunedin, they're the only folks working on appropriate-size reactors today. However, I doubt they'll get 28% thermal efficiency with heat pipes, and I doubt they'll get a 12-year core with pragmatic enrichments.

HarryHirsch 12y ago

Are size and efficiency the most pressing issues to solve in nuclear power? You'd think the greatest problem facing a potential buyer is getting planning permission and insurance. Who wants a nuclear reactor down the road, even if it's a scaled-up TRIGA design? From what thin details are there in the Techcrunch writeup ("spent fuel from it can be reused in another reactor with some processing") it could almost be a pulse reactor, the design is well-understood. Another worry is getting rid of the used fuel rods. With all the 70-odd TRIGAs operating around the world, the United States will take them back, but who can tell with a startup?

dadiomov 12y ago

I studied energy at Stanford and joined the team that spun TerraPower (www.terrapower.com) out of Intellectual Ventures with Bill Gates' backing. I spent a lot of time looking at these nuclear batteries and economically it's very hard to see them working out as anything close to competitive to natural gas, coal, or wind. The amount of security, containment, etc. that you need for a large plant vs. a small plant doesn't vary much, so the costs per kWh don't scale down as you move down in total plant size, they scale up - and the idea as the techcrunch article suggests that you could sell just a "thermal" battery and let the utility or whoever add the actual steam-to-electric conversion on their own is laughable. Utilities don't do anything on their own. I do hope these guys figured out something novel about the economics -- and I certainly applaud YC for going into energy.

pjscott 12y ago
They're aiming at niches where they won't be competing directly with more conventional power plants. Their web site claims [1] that it's intended "for remote and distributed generation where energy costs can exceed 30 cents/kWh, and power is needed 24/7". [1] http://www.upowertech.com/p/technology.html http://www.upowertech.com/p/technology.html
- jddw 12y ago
  Precisely right. Traditional utilities want something with a long operating track record, something hard for new designs to do off the bat. But going where the reactor is 5x cheaper than the next best option changes that. Plus many of these places want combined heat and power, so the design needs to be flexible on the thermal end.
  - dadiomov 12y ago
    there's definitely an opportunity in providing thermal at factories. lots of remote sites in India and China have their own purpose-built coal plants that could potentially use something like that...I have a harder time seeing the financing line up for serving remote villages that can't afford any power today. In those cases finance will always flow to smaller increment technologies, even if they're higher $/kWh, like solar + battery or diesel

omegaworks 12y ago

>with some processing Weasel words. Reprocessing spent nuclear fuel introduces a MASSIVE regulatory boondoggle.

pjscott 12y ago
True, but you can always use a once-through fuel cycle at first. EDIT: It turns out that the article was inaccurate, and they won't be reprocessing. Consider this comment happily retracted!
donttrustatoms 12y ago
Great, great call to point out. The author very unfortunately did not understand that there is NO "reprocessing" necessary for our reactors to reuse fuel. Why, oh why, don't we get to preview what they write. Wording is so important in such a massively misunderstood space. It is a proven process utilized previously in fuel manufacture, and simply adds a little new fuel to existing used fuel. It does not involving isolating any portions of the fuel as done in reprocessing (which is the main "proliferation hazard" of reprocessing). -COO UPower
- beefman 12y ago
  Can you be a little more descriptive here? I suspect you really are reprocessing, and shouldn't be afraid to say so.
  - donttrustatoms 12y ago
    In the fuel manufacture for redeployment, it's more or less as simple as melting down and recasting. The distinction is reprocessing is generally way more complicated, frequently involves chemicals, and could separate out plutonium which gets people worried.

jddw 12y ago

Hey HN I'm Jake, one of the co-founders of UPower. Some good discussion here. I've posted a few responses below, happy to answer some questions here. Thanks!

clarkm 12y ago
Hey Jake, congrats on S14! I see it's described as a battery -- does this mean you're focusing on keeping everything as small as possible? How small do you think the whole operation can get? Could it fit in a semi truck and be driven around?

rjdagost 12y ago

There is a company called Gen4 Energy (formerly Hyperion Power Generation) that has been pursuing the "nuclear battery" concept for 7 or so years: http://www.gen4energy.com http://www.gen4energy.com Regulatory approval has been elusive, and that's for a team of 30+ year nuclear industry veterans. The challenges in this industry are brutal, I hope UPower has deep enough pockets and extreme patience to shake up the industry.

beefman 12y ago
They started with a good-sized design, but have scaled it up a couple times since then. They're no longer in mass-production territory.
- rjdagost 12y ago
  So Gen4 Energy started with a similar sized "nuclear battery" concept. After burning through many millions of dollars of investment and years of hard work from a highly skilled team, they decide that prospects are better for larger scale reactors. That ought to give these guys food for thought. I hope these guys know something the Gen4 team doesn't, but the basic trajectory UPower on has been followed before without paying dividends.

donttrustatoms 12y ago

I am one of the UPower founders. The key takeaways here are that the main hindrances to novel nuclear are (1) meeting regulatory and safety necessities without huge testing costs, which also require a customer interested in purchasing, and (2) competing with the grid, (3) huge scientific/technical risks if not yet proven. UPower meets these by (1) being small enough to build a very tough, full scale emulator for testing, never before done in nuclear. (2) not competing on the grid, which gives immediate, in need customers which is also necessary for regulatory process to complete in (1). (3) using technologies and materials with decades of experience, in a new way, eliminating the huge uncertainties of many startups you see in the news.

idlewords 12y ago
I think the key-est takeaway is the need to persuade people not to be terrified of nuclear energy. That's likely to require an effort on a par with any technical advances you make.
- donttrustatoms 12y ago
  Great point. It's so true. It's exciting that having nuclear backing from groups like YC help people be less terrified (another nuclear group in YC is Helion!). Some great documentaries like Pandora's Box (on netflix) are helping. And generally, i think people are sometimes just relatively growing "less terrified" of nuclear than global pollution, climate change, ocean acidification etc.
- beefman 12y ago
  Realizing the cost advantage of fission will change minds pretty quick. Of course there's the catch-22 of being able to do it before their minds are changed. uPower's plan of trying offgrid first may be worth a shot. A little understanding of FUD psychology can help too. Today's nuclear industry flunks on that. Telling people nuclear is safe is a classic mistake. Safety is a feeling, and it's hard to feel safe about things you've never touched and can't even picture. There's virtuous feedback here too -- more reactors around, more people who see them and stop fearing them. A charismatic CEO who can stand on top of a reactor on YouTube can't hurt either.

ihnorton 12y ago

Details are scarce on the website and in the articles I've found, but this seems similar to the 4S project Toshiba has been working on for over a decade [1,2]. Between the full-size plants they've built in Japan, and their acquisition of Westinghouse, Toshiba owns a respectable chunk of the nuclear engineering talent and experience on the planet. It doesn't seem to have gone much further [3] than the last time I read about it. What is UPower going to do differently? Nuclear engineering strikes me as one of those areas where exuberant inexperience and simulation prowess are not selling points. Youngsters work ok for software because (1) business inexperience can be offset by deep technical experience, and then rapid product iterations - both made possible by low entry barriers; and (2) screwing up (most) software has negligible negative externalities. Neither of those apply to nuclear engineering. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_4S http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_4S [2] http://www.toshiba.com/tane/products_4s.jsp http://www.toshiba.com/tane/products_4s.jsp [3] http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/advanced/4s.html http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/advanced/4s.html

donttrustatoms 12y ago
The 4S is an order of magnitude larger, uses complicated flow, and has significant materials issues left to prove out. You're absolutely right- this is completely different than high school dropouts coding. How can a startup disrupt a large, established, stodgy industry? For example, I studied automotive engineering before MIT nuclear grad school and worked in marketing for almost every auto manufacturer: how did Tesla do what the Big guys didn't? It always starts with a simple, proven product and a niche market in need/willing to pay a premium. That being said our team does have wide ranging experience. Our CEO worked at GE on their revolutionary reactor they more or less shelved years ago and are now restarting. He served on the board of directors of the American Nuclear Society and has a PhD from MIT. He has seen and worked in the industry from operations of a real reactor to fuel sales to weapons design at national labs to naval reactor design to big industry since high school. The other good news is that the old dudes approve. We will probably soon publish our advisory board including retired regulatory high ups, industry folk who have successfully licensed, and retired high ranking army energy people. We are leveraging the decades of experience of fuel makers and materials experts... It's fun to see the gleam in their eye when they get excited to really build something. Ultimately the question of why hasn't this been done before and wasnt possible before has several clear answers, but no answers for those convinced only large, established, old companies can be in these big spaces ripe for disruption. Maybe they are right, maybe not us, maybe not now. It's not easy but it seems inevitable at some point.

dredmorbius 12y ago

First off: I'm very pleased to see that YC are backing startup concepts other than an endless stream of privacy-invading "social" surveilices, games, and new forms of intrusive and annoying advertising. I'd posted something of a rant on that subject about 7 months ago which didn't go over hugely at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7063690 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7063690 Secondly: this is actually what I'd consider a "Big Problems" start-up, a field which has been notoriously hard to crack. Kleiner Perkins' failure in cleantech over the past 7 year or so has been humbling. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6906635 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6906635 But that said: nuclear's got quite a few issues with it, most particularly the abundance of fuel, and long-term safety. Outside a 6-80 year window in which existing reserves would last (the low-end estimate is "run everything on nuclear", the high is "continue with modest growth at present levels of energy output"), where and/or whether there's enough uranium, plutonium, or thorium to provide energy over the long term is a very real concern. Even beyond that is the safety profile in a world in which a large fraction of human energy production is derived from nuclear power. If _present_ electrical generation needs were to be met, the number of reactors required would grow from the present TK to over 15,000. With a lifetime of 40 years, plus ten years for construction, and 20 for decommissioning, you're looking at bringing a new reactor online, and an old reactor offline, every day. At any given time there would be 3,750 rectors under construction and another 7,500 being decommissioned. Given the US NRC's estimates of 125 paramilitary security personnel per nuclear plant, you'd nave an army, literally, of 1,875,000 security personnel (all highly vetted) worldwide. Not to mention your supply of nuclear engineers and other highly skilled staffing requirements. See Derek Abbott's "Is Nuclear Power Globally Scalable": http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?reload=true&arnumber=06021978 http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?reload=true&arnum... SG Collins, "Nuke Skeptic" http://fixyt.com/watch?v=IHYpYB2vUjM http://fixyt.com/watch?v=IHYpYB2vUjM The video makes a few points, but the primary one is this: Nuclear proponents are, in their beliefs, not essentially more scientific than nuke skeptics. That they're also influenced by ideals and desires, and even persuasion. Discussions of benefits and risks are usually scoped locally: here and now. The civilization that we have right now. That's short-sighted. I'm not fully opposed to nuclear power. But I'm exceptionally skeptical that it will serve us well in the long run. http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2awjj2/thoughts_on_nuclear_energy/ http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2awjj2/thoughts...

svasan 12y ago

As soon as I saw "nuclear", I was put off. Not because I have anything against nuclear power (in fact I am fully convinced of its potential), but because of the way people perceive the word nuclear. Whenever "nuclear" is mentioned, people get negatively predisposed. Case in point - Magnetic Resonance Imaging was initially called Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging. The word nuclear was causing anxiety amongst the patients. The healthcare practitioners dropped nuclear and patients did not mind undergoing the MRI scan. I think a massive rebranding exercise needs to be undertaken while pitching nuclear technologies. It could be atomic technology, it could be some other words that "click" with people as opposed to scaring them off. Unless the psychological battle is won, I am of the opinion that no amount of tech progress would convince people. Perception greatly matters with humans more than the merits of the product/service/technology/initiative. edit - Not sure why this was downvoted. I was against the use of word "nuclear". Not anything else.

sargun 12y ago

This is super exciting. Highly-reliable, off-grid power is amazing. Today, datacenters have to buy massive diesel generators, and ensure they have diesel supplies in case of grid power failure. This infrastructure is surprisingly difficult to maintain. It sounds like UPower's devices are always-on, and although they're not directly competitive with grid power, it sounds significantly simpler to power your datacenter off of N+1 of these devices, and then potentially pump power back into the grid during high-demand, and use the grid during outages of the UPower system, and to bridge periods of maintenance. There are many datacenters that are in not very populated towns. These sound like great places to put generators. Datacenters are everywhere, even in countries with less regulation than the US. I don't know what the export laws are around these "nuclear batteries" (small scale reactors), but I for one am very excited!

Mvandenbergh 12y ago

Three advantages of building very small reactors: 1) Because heat output scales with the cube of the size and passive thermal dissipation scales with the square, small units can be more easily designed to stay within thermal bounds when active cooling fails. 2) One of the biggest cost for nuclear construction is interest costs during the construction process, reducing that time makes a big difference. 3) When you build 20 small units you get 20 chances to make small enhancements and 20 chances to get better and faster at building them. When you build one large unit (which is almost definitely more cost effective on paper) you get one chance to do it and it takes so long that even if you build more than one of the same design, you'll never have the same team building multiple units.

legulere 12y ago

I wonder why nuclear radiation can only be harnessed indirectly through heat. Couldn't things like the photoelectric effect be used for something similar to photovoltaic cells?

kelvin0 12y ago

The idea of a start-up that does not try to re-invent Twitter/Facebook/Flappy Bird is amazing ... I would love to be involved in such an endeavor.

the_solution 12y ago

From the website: "waste products that have to be buried for hundreds of years" Wow, that is... inaccurate. Let's have a look. (EDIT: to clarify, format is substance (% present in used fuel): half life U238 (~94% of used nuclear fuel): ~4.5 billion years Pu (~1% of used nuclear fuel): 24 000 years Sources: http://www.techniklexikon.net/d/abgebrannte_brennelemente/abgebrannte_brennelemente.htm http://www.techniklexikon.net/d/abgebrannte_brennelemente/ab... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Isotope/7._Periode#92_Uran http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Isotope/7._Periode#92...

cjslep 12y ago
Just because it is a long-lived radioactive isotope does not mean it is dangerous. I'm referring to U238. It decays by alpha radiation, so unless you are literally eating it or inhaling it, those alpha particles will not penetrate your skin. Additionally, U238's long half life is why it remains as the most plentiful naturally occurring (on Earth) radioactive isotope. I'm tired of people trying to fear-monger radiation by throwing big numbers around. It would be instead be helpful discussing how to get roughly 4 alpha particles to decay per day inside them someone needs to eat roughly 1,000,000,000,000g of pure U238 that day.
- the_solution 12y ago
  U238 decays to (among others) Polonium which will kill your very fast from inside you body. I think your estimate is off by a few orders of magnitude. Edit: "pure U238" is another point where you go wrong. There is no such thing in nuclear waste, nor will there ever be when it decays. So if i grant you that pure U238 on it's own is not that dangerous, that does absolutely not make nuclear waste less dangerous. The U238 decays to other radioactive substances, then those decay and so on. The long half life of the U238 guarantees that you have a very toxic mix for tens of thousands of years.
  - cjslep 12y ago
    That's what I get trying to balance rough numbers in my head. I was using roughly the number of atoms, not grams. Here's the math laid bare: Frac Remain In 1 Day = 0.5 ^ ((1/365)/4,500,000,000 years) Frac Remain In 1 Day = 0.999999999999578 Frac Decay In 1 Day = 1 - Frac Remain In 1 Day Frac Decay In 1 Day = 4.22 * 10^-13 Have 4 Decays In 1 Day = Total U238 * Frac Decay In 1 Day 4 = Total U238 * 4.22 * 10^-13 4 / (4.22 * 10^-13) = Total U238 Total U238 = 9.48 * 10 ^ 12 atoms I stand corrected, thanks for catching that.

the_solution 12y ago

Quote from http://www.upowertech.com/p/technology.html http://www.upowertech.com/p/technology.html: "carbon-free and emission-free" You're telling me that you get enriched fuel, plant production, transport and waste management (plant and fuel) emission free?!? How do people fall for things like this? "I doesn't produce emissions if you only count the parts that don't produce emissions". Brilliant. And don't even get me started about the super secret "nano-nuclear" tech they claim to have or the cooling using "proprietary technology".

donttrustatoms 12y ago
nuclear fuel is 2 million times more energy dense than any other fuel (even more energy dense than that for solar or wind), and this reactor is 30 times more efficient than conventional reactors. that means roughly 2 million times less transportation, less land use and less waste. (Land use comparisons: http://newenergyandfuel.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/LandUseforEnergy-ClintonAndrews.jpg http://newenergyandfuel.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/LandU...) How can we factor in the amount of CO2 removal lost by removal of millions of trees for wind farms? (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10546071/Millions-of-trees-chopped-down-to-make-way-for-Scottish-wind-farms.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10546071/Millions-o...) Or millions less train use in transport of coal? It's a good point though. We should count not just that the reactor itself saves 200,000 tons of CO2 during operation, but also the frequently 10x that of fuel burnt to transport that diesel in conventional generators. So each reactor deployment may save 2 million tons of CO2. Nuclear facilities are also much longer lived than many. Eg solar panel life degrades significantly after a decade. Wind turbines generally have a life of 15 years of so. So that's less concrete, construction, etc. You're right it's tough or impossible to quanitfy. Intuitively, it all comes back to the energy density number. 2 million times more energy dense, no emissions or pollution in operation, and the "waste" is actually useful fuel which produces energy.
- the_solution 12y ago
  Chopping down trees to make room for wind farms is certainly dumb. If you take a closer look that is yet another story about the dangers of subsidies. "nuclear fuel is 2 million times more energy dense than any other fuel" Citation needed. Also i don't think energy densitiy is what we are looking for here. Remember the thorium car? A drop of water (in principle) also contains all the energy needed to power a car for years. Now if you could just get the H-atoms to fuse... The point is, it matters how much energy you can (efficiently, at all, ...) get out of it. "How can we factor in" - Calculate it. "We should count not just (...) CO2 during operation, but also (...)" Yes, PLEASE make a complete calculation based on solid numbers taking every aspect of the whole lifecycle of a power plant into account INCLUDING fuel production, fuel transportation and waste management. The publish it please.

dredmorbius 12y ago

Is there more detail on just how the energy is being generated here? All I see is "battery" and intimations that there are no working fluids.