Think Hiring a Ruby Developer is Hard? Try Staffing a Nuclear Reactor Startup

Loic wrote: post #2

Just cross the Atlantic, open a subsidiary in France. You will find there a lot of extremely qualified engineers for everything nuclear related.

Are they still using Francs for their units of reactivity, or did that get changed to Euros as well?

Re: Think Hiring a Ruby Developer is Hard? Try Staffing a Nuclear Reactor Startup

#5

Post by starfox » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 7:54 PM UTC

amalag wrote: post #3

I thought thorium was the frontier in nuclear reactors.

80% of the cost of nuclear energy is building the reactor. With around $500B worth of existing reactor infrastructure worldwide, which runs on Uranium, don't expect that to go away too soon.

Re: Think Hiring a Ruby Developer is Hard? Try Staffing a Nuclear Reactor Startup

#6

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 7:59 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Think Hiring a Ruby Developer is Hard? Try Staffing a Nuclear Reactor Startup

#7

Post by kemiller » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 8:02 PM UTC

amalag wrote: post #3

I thought thorium was the frontier in nuclear reactors.

Thorium reactors are often MSR designs too. But if this offers the possibility of reducing our existing waste supplies, it might make it more publicly palatable.

Re: Think Hiring a Ruby Developer is Hard? Try Staffing a Nuclear Reactor Startup

#8

Post by Symmetry » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 8:02 PM UTC

amalag wrote: post #3

I thought thorium was the frontier in nuclear reactors.

Its the frontier of reactors-that-don't-explode. In the short term, our laws were written with light water reactors in mind, so anybody who wants to build a thorium reactor is going to have to build all the same expensive safety features that light water reactors need, plus the special metallurgy that molten salt reactors need. So basically it doesn't make sense until something changes.

Re: Think Hiring a Ruby Developer is Hard? Try Staffing a Nuclear Reactor Startup

#9

Post by kemiller » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 8:17 PM UTC

I wonder how politically difficult it would be to get one of these built near Yucca Mountain. Given that a) it's already a nuclear hotzone in the minds of the public, and b) this offers some possibility of improving the situation while generating exportable power. You'd think this would be an interesting prospect to at least one philanthropically-minded billionaire.

Re: Think Hiring a Ruby Developer is Hard? Try Staffing a Nuclear Reactor Startup

#10

Post by ScotterC » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 8:20 PM UTC

I'm so glad there are nuclear startups. There's so much to be done in this field. It's enormously tough to disrupt but licensing a design might be a start.

Talent is extraordinarily hard to find for this. All the great engineers with domain experience are starting to retire. The ones that are left are extremely risk averse. You have to attempt to poach from GE or Westinghouse.

I worked for Westinghouse for two years doing Pipe Analysis and Fracture Mechanics. There are funny things that happen to steel piping at 2250 psi and 600 degrees Fahrenheit. Only nukes are familiar with the stresses and environmental fatigues that can happen in that environment over an 80 year period.