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UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries

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Re: UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries

#61

Post by ChuckMcM »

donttrustatoms wrote: post #41

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 test…

This seems like an interesting technology, especially if you can keep the moving parts to a minimum. I did a bit of research on mineral extraction. Not surprisingly the more refined your minerals the more valuable they are, and building an on-site blast furnace to convert various forms of iron ore into pig iron would allow countries like Afghanistan extract more value out of their mineral deposits. The challenge is that without infrastructure the traditional solution is build a mine, build train tracks to the mine, and then transport raw ore from the mine to the processing facility (this is being done in some of China's western provinces). Primary issue of building a refinery is a reliable source of power. One key is unattended operation. Is that something you are planning for?

Re: UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries

#62

Post by Turing_Machine »

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.

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?

Re: UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries

#63

Post by Turing_Machine »

idlewords wrote: post #53
prestadige wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong, perhaps, but 'badly' wrong? Despite the accident, building Fukushima saved lives and reduced atmospheric pollution relative to other power sources. Part of the reason we haven't improved reactor designs as rapidly as we should is due to irrational fears surrounding nuclear power. In other words, such fears have to some extent been a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The fears aren't so irrational. They reflect the fact that we don't know how to assess and manage risk over the kinds of timescales required to safely handle nuclear waste.

After a couple of hundred years the waste is no more radioactive than the ore from which it came.

Although the fear-mongers never mention this,"long half-life" means "less radioactive". By definition.

Re: UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries

#64

Post by donttrustatoms »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #61
donttrustatoms wrote: post #41

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 test…

This seems like an interesting technology, especially if you can keep the moving parts to a minimum. I did a bit of research on mineral extraction. Not surprisingly the more refined your minerals the more valuable they are, and building an on-site blast furnace to convert various forms of iron ore into pig iron would allow countries like Afghanistan extract more value out of their mineral deposits. The challenge is t…

Great assessment and distilled description. We have literally spoken to people from lithium mines to chromium mines to remote oil or copper mines and they have explained this same predicament of difficulty of reliable power on site.

As far as unattended: in sum, the technology allows it, but the regulatory structure may not be comfortable with it in the near term. It's not the deal breaker you might think in terms of economics. We are talking about more reliable power at multiples less with prices that don't require the complicated hedging and regular bulk purchases as oil and gas. Generally, we are looking at staffing structure similar to oil rigs- weeks on, weeks off. As regulators and public understand operation, we could transition to remote staff managing sites. Truth is that the technology shuts itself down in case of any bad event (see EBR for similar, really amazing) and there would be almost nothing for on site personnel to do, but there is a perceived safety blanket with having a warm body on site.

Does that answer your question?

Re: UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries

#65

Post by donttrustatoms »

beefman wrote: post #58
idlewords wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

You're absolutely right that safety is a feeling, and we are thinking like you that having a full scale prototype that people and regulators could see, hug, feel, and basically test drive will help. It's just not big and scary. In fact, the amount of heat produced by the reactor a day after shutdown would be on the order of a hundred hair dryers. Sounds cozy :) loud but cozy.

Where the industry has failed in engaging new types of social media (HN, YouTube, reddit, quora, etc) people are stepping up. And honestly it's probably better this way.

On a side note, people don't realize but there's no big nuclear industry really. Our founders have met and spent time with executives from nearly every domestic utility company and all of them have different types of power in their portfolio. They have no real interest in promoting nuclear over coal. The uranium miners make no money compared to coal mines because, think of it, one two-millionth of the volume of nuclear materials is needed compared to the volume of coal. You've never seen a uranium train car, because reactors don't need to burn hundreds of train cars a day and put that in our air.

Compound that with the fact that anything nuclear is like sex and plane crashes for news media. :)

So it's a battle to get education out, but smart people like you on HN will win the day. I really believe it.

Also our charismatic CEO will do his best to stand on a reactor for you ASAP.

Re: UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries

#66

Post by idlewords »

beefman wrote: post #58
idlewords wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

I would very much enjoy seeing CEOs stand on top of reactors on YouTube. There doesn't even need to be shielding.

Re: UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries

#67

Post by donttrustatoms »

idlewords wrote: post #50
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.

Nuclear plants certainly do "explode" when things when wrong. I assume you used scare quotes because you were thinking of a nuclear detonation, but there was plenty of damage done by the non-nuclear explosions at Chernobyl and Fukushima, to cite the most famous examples.

You are right that there are explosions, but it isn't an explosion like an atomic bomb. You understand the difference, but unfortunately there is a fundamental misunderstanding for the general public that a reactor could function like a bomb. There just isn't the energy density to do that.

There was physical damage to structures at Fukushima but that didn't cause any real damage outside the plant or releases. The releases were leaks elsewhere (which were still not huge compared to natural radiation levels).

Chernobyl was due to a reactor literally geared for instability (search rbmk void fraction for details) in the Soviet union. It had no containment around the reactor. So a basic structure around the reactor would crumble with an explosion. But it wouldn't contain that much regardless since it wasn't designed to, and they frankly were arrogant and didn't care much about safety precautions.

As to the plenty of damage from Chernobyl, here's the facts: it has been highly studied over almost 30 years, it is a nature preserve, people who refused to evacuate still live there healthily, and they still operate a reactor on that site. Here's an article which examined and summarized the largest and most reputable medical studies on the Chernobyl aftermath. I was genuinely surprised myself. http://www.thingsworsethannuclearpower.com/2012/05/things-wo...

Re: UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries

#68

Post by ihnorton »

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 [2] http://www.toshiba.com/tane/products_4s.jsp [3] http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/advanced/4s.html

Re: UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries

#69

Post by simonebrunozzi »

donttrustatoms wrote: post #41

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 test…

You being one of the founders, I found your HN username amusing :)

I like that you're attacking a real problem. Good luck.

Re: UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries

#70

Post by dredmorbius »

guiomie wrote: post #9

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

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

I do hope to see more Big Problem startups. Even if I'm not much of a fan of nuclear.

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