UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries • Hacker News Board

Re: UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries

#11

Post by rdl » Tue, Aug 19, 2014, 12:44 AM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #10

chrissnell wrote: post #2

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 rest…

> 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.

"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.

Re: UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries

#12

Post by rdtsc » Tue, Aug 19, 2014, 12:45 AM UTC

TheHoffman wrote: post #4

- 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 disassem…

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

Re: UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries

#13

Post by beefman » Tue, Aug 19, 2014, 12:47 AM UTC

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.

Re: UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries

#14

Post by damian2000 » Tue, Aug 19, 2014, 12:52 AM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #10

chrissnell wrote: post #2

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 rest…

> 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.

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.

Re: UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries

#15

Post by HarryHirsch » Tue, Aug 19, 2014, 12:52 AM UTC

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?

Re: UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries

#16

Post by beefman » Tue, Aug 19, 2014, 12:54 AM UTC

TheHoffman wrote: post #4

- 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 disassem…

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.

Re: UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries

#17

Post by DaniFong » Tue, Aug 19, 2014, 12:55 AM UTC

TheHoffman wrote: post #4

- 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 disassem…

Not actually, unfortunately for you ;-)

Re: UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries

#18

Post by dadiomov » Tue, Aug 19, 2014, 12:57 AM UTC

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.

Re: UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries

#19

Post by ekianjo » Tue, Aug 19, 2014, 12:59 AM UTC

damian2000 wrote: post #14

ekianjo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

I live in Japan and I don't consider that the outcome was as catastrophic as the media said it was (they are always ready to jump on the apocalyptic trigger). Everything went wrong (even the backup generators as they were blown away by the tsunami) and it was still reasonably contained and the levels of ambient contamination are nowhere as high as they initially predicted.

EDIT: > most tightly regulated and technologically advanced countries in the world.

Let's drop this kind of argument here, there are many things which are not technologically advanced at all in Japan. Like the fact you can't even use a credit card to pay in most places. This is really old.

Re: UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries

#20

Post by djb_hackernews » Tue, Aug 19, 2014, 1:02 AM UTC

chrissnell wrote: post #2

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 rest…

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.