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

bostinno.com

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

#21
post #20
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if this got modded down because people think I'm being facetious, but I'm seriously wondering what happened with that. For people who don't know, every country in the world, besides France, used "Dollars" for their units of reactivity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Slotin#The_Dollar_unit_of... France, on the other hand, used "Francs". Conveniently, the exchange rate was 1:1. I'd be surprised if they…

How is your first comment relevant? Answer that, and you'll figure out why you were down voted.

Well, I'm sure it's something that could be worked out, but there will likely be naming issues between French and Non-French nuclear engineers working together. It seems relevant to me, given that the topic was to bring French engineers into a U.S. startup.

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

#24

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…

I fear certifying a design can be hideously expensive. I am not familiar with the rules, but I'd assume one would need to build a complete reactor and operate it for some time.

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

#25
post #12

I'm a bit scared that there might be "rockstar" nuclear engineers out there.

I think engineers in hard sciences are a bit different than "startup" software "engineers". Anyone can make mistakes of course, but the process and professionalism is different.

I'm not bashing all programmers, just ones who are part of the "rockstar" startup scene.

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

#26

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…

"There are funny things that happen to steel piping at 2250 psi and 600 degrees Fahrenheit."

And why we have to use steel piping at 153atm and 300C?

The fact is that we are using a design that is totally obsolete and designed for creating nuclear bombs, not for giving us energy.

The good thing about startups is that they could think different, use creativity to innovate and invent new methods. Einstein was not very intelligent a la Von Newman, contrary to popular belief, but he was super creative.

Creativity is destroyed in academia.

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

#27
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.

But then you have to operate in France, which by all accounts (from my European colleagues) may not be worth the cost :)

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

#29

Not sure if the talent pool would fit the startup culture but the US Navy might be worth investigating. Or the Russian, British, or French navies.

I was thinking that too. There should be plenty of grads from the US Navy Nuclear Power School, and the officer grads are likely to have at minimum undergrad engineering degrees either from the Naval Academy or civilian universities.

http://www.navy.com/careers/nuclear-energy/

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

#30

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…

"There are funny things that happen to steel piping at 2250 psi and 600 degrees Fahrenheit." And why we have to use steel piping at 153atm and 300C? The fact is that we are using a design that is totally obsolete and designed for creating nuclear bombs, not for giving us energy. The good thing about startups is that they could think different, use creativity to innovate and invent new methods. Einstein was not very i…

Hold on there buddy. All Western designed PWRs or BWRs (which is nearly all of them) are not designed to be yielding bombs. Their neutron flux is simply not high enough to give enough enrichment.

Two other types of plants you might be thinking of when taking bomb materials into account. The russian design for Chernobyl was meant to produce electricity and bomb fuel which is why it had a graphite moderator which creates a very high neutron flux.

The other one is the sodium cooled breeder reactor which we chose instead of the molten salt design discussed in the article. The sodium breeder was good at making plutonium but still was never designed to have that plutonium removed in any usable fashion. Sodium is a tricky substance it reacts with water violently. The french still have a plant or two going as do the Chinese but it's really not a stellar design.

Now, I agree about the temps and pressures being unnecessary. The reason for these is about efficiency of scale. In a power grid like America's where we need 1 gigawatt and greater plants, plus with licensing a plant being so difficult, you build the biggest baddest plant you can which can output the most power. This means you go with the highest temps and pressures while still being ultra safe to create a more power efficient reactor.

Smaller reactors which would be better for the power grids of the world. Like 250 mega watts would not need these extreme environments. There are some great designs for a back of trailer truck reactor which can just hook up to a coal plant's secondary systems (steam turbines and such).

The best part of nuclear startups is nuclear is not a 'if' question. It's a when. I just hope we can disrupt quickly enough to bring that sort of power production here sooner rather then later.

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