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

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

#41

Post by neutronicus »

forgottenpaswrd wrote: post #26
ScotterC wrote: post #10

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…

There's enormous value in having 60 years of data on the neutron irradiation properties and mechanical failure modes of a material. An "obsolete" design is also a well-understood one, and you can't afford to fail fast and often in the nuclear industry.

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

#43

Post by neutronicus »

res wrote: post #34
forgottenpaswrd wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

>Creativity is destroyed in academia. I wonder what this means for nuclear engineering's future, because I'm looking at Transatomic Power's team and I'm seeing a lot of influence from academia. Both members of the actual management team are PhD candidates, and all three members of the advisory board are professors. Granted this is one sample, but it seems like the barriers to entry for energy startups in general, but…

It's also a meaningless statement from the sidelines. Just where are all of these outlandish reactor designs coming from, anyways? Oh, right. Academia. This isn't a case of a hidebound academia and a fantastically innovative private sector. Really, the opposite is true.

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

#44

Post by larsberg »

The older age demographic may work in their favor --- the "about to retire" crowd might be willing to work with them on pretty favorable terms, especially if they are flexibile on location and hours. It would be a heck of a lot more interesting and rewarding than consulting part-time for Westinghouse or GE, which is what they would probably otherwise do.

I've been thinking a lot about this kind of problem because the foundry industry is in much the same state. My father has been working in it (metallurgy, process/lean, product design and test, etc.) for ~45 years and is retiring in a few years. The foundry industry is also a field with basically nobody between the ages of 25-55 in the US, and he's thinking about what he will do to keep busy once the pension and social security kick in, apart from the obvious occasional contracting gig.

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

#45

Post by ScotterC »

neutronicus wrote: post #40
ScotterC wrote: post #10

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's a lot of young talent out there - enrollment basically hockey-sticked while I was studying nuclear engineering from '06-'10. Their best bet is probably finding the right kind of phD student, because the real hot-shots from Westinghouse and GE can make more money striking out as consultants. I personally decided to get out of nuclear engineering and into physics, but best of luck to these guys and gals.

I got out of nuclear engineering and into fine art oddly enough :). But mostly cause I like that the web doesn't regulate what I can and cannot do.

I'm really pulling for this new generation. Heck, I want to get back into nuclear engineering once I have a startup or two under my belt. But a lot of what it takes to be successful is gonna be politics and bureaucracy. Knowing the older engineers who have moved up to NRC is a huge boon. Also being able to work utility company execs that want to take a chance. Then there's the actual politicians to convince. It's a lot of work. Most of it isn't going to be actual engineering.

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

#46

Post by mjwalshe »

ScotterC wrote: post #33
rbanffy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is hideously expensive. Don't know how these guys are gonna do it. I remember talking with a prominent VC who had a division in the energy space. They got a few nuclear startup pitches. Always, it was 'we need 100 mil... and 50 of that is going to the gov't for licensing'. If these guys have figured out a way around this. All the power to them.

and $50Mill is probably not going to pay for building a test reactor and all the research that will need to be done before that plus you will need some decent HPC grunt to do you CFD modeling then real world physical models (1:1 and over scale is not cheap) to prove the math works.

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

#48

Post by mrb »

starfox wrote: post #4
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?

You probably got downvoted because, most people don't know Slotin literally proposed a unit of reactivity called the "dollar", and most thought you meant to type "currency" instead of "reactivity" which would make it a bad sarcastic joke... I know my jokes often get downvoted too :)

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

#49

Post by jarek »

jff wrote: post #27
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.

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

Luckily you can just Change The World by doing a node.js startup in the Mission...

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

#50

Post by kevinalexbrown »

I'm close with someone who was offered a position at a nuclear startup NuScale, that aims to manufacture cookie-cutter, modular nuclear reactors, where you scale the power plant by adding more reactors over time as your needs change, and ship the old spent ones off.

As I understand it, part of the problem in hiring is that for a nuclear startup you really need experienced engineers as you go into producing working prototypes. Depending on the position, they don't necessarily need explicit nuclear experience - my relative didn't have it - but they do need a proven track record of not majorly screwing up ever, and that requires experience you can usually only get working for years in real engineering environments. There can be no 'oops, we messed up the privacy requirements' apology or people die, meltdowns happen, and the company gets the biggest of red flags.

That's not to say you need to be old to start a nuclear company, but that you will probably need to work with older engineers, who are harder to hire, settled in their jobs, and scattered across the US, with mortgages, families, and the like.

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