UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries

First off: I'm very pleased to see that YC are backing startup concepts other than an endless stream of privacy-invading "social" surveilices, games, and new forms of intrusive and annoying advertising. I'd posted something of a rant on that subject about 7 months ago which didn't go over hugely at the time:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7063690

Secondly: this is actually what I'd consider a "Big Problems" start-up, a field which has been notoriously hard to crack. Kleiner Perkins' failure in cleantech over the past 7 year or so has been humbling.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6906635

But that said: nuclear's got quite a few issues with it, most particularly the abundance of fuel, and long-term safety.

Outside a 6-80 year window in which existing reserves would last (the low-end estimate is "run everything on nuclear", the high is "continue with modest growth at present levels of energy output"), where and/or whether there's enough uranium, plutonium, or thorium to provide energy over the long term is a very real concern.

Even beyond that is the safety profile in a world in which a large fraction of human energy production is derived from nuclear power. If _present_ electrical generation needs were to be met, the number of reactors required would grow from the present TK to over 15,000. With a lifetime of 40 years, plus ten years for construction, and 20 for decommissioning, you're looking at bringing a new reactor online, and an old reactor offline, every day. At any given time there would be 3,750 rectors under construction and another 7,500 being decommissioned. Given the US NRC's estimates of 125 paramilitary security personnel per nuclear plant, you'd nave an army, literally, of 1,875,000 security personnel (all highly vetted) worldwide. Not to mention your supply of nuclear engineers and other highly skilled staffing requirements.

See Derek Abbott's "Is Nuclear Power Globally Scalable": http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?reload=true&arnum...

SG Collins, "Nuke Skeptic" http://fixyt.com/watch?v=IHYpYB2vUjM

The video makes a few points, but the primary one is this: Nuclear proponents are, in their beliefs, not essentially more scientific than nuke skeptics. That they're also influenced by ideals and desires, and even persuasion. Discussions of benefits and risks are usually scoped locally: here and now. The civilization that we have right now. That's short-sighted.

I'm not fully opposed to nuclear power. But I'm exceptionally skeptical that it will serve us well in the long run.

http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2awjj2/thoughts...

The 4S is an order of magnitude larger, uses complicated flow, and has significant materials issues left to prove out.

You're absolutely right- this is completely different than high school dropouts coding.

How can a startup disrupt a large, established, stodgy industry?

For example, I studied automotive engineering before MIT nuclear grad school and worked in marketing for almost every auto manufacturer: how did Tesla do what the Big guys didn't?

It always starts with a simple, proven product and a niche market in need/willing to pay a premium.

That being said our team does have wide ranging experience. Our CEO worked at GE on their revolutionary reactor they more or less shelved years ago and are now restarting. He served on the board of directors of the American Nuclear Society and has a PhD from MIT. He has seen and worked in the industry from operations of a real reactor to fuel sales to weapons design at national labs to naval reactor design to big industry since high school.

The other good news is that the old dudes approve. We will probably soon publish our advisory board including retired regulatory high ups, industry folk who have successfully licensed, and retired high ranking army energy people. We are leveraging the decades of experience of fuel makers and materials experts... It's fun to see the gleam in their eye when they get excited to really build something.

Ultimately the question of why hasn't this been done before and wasnt possible before has several clear answers, but no answers for those convinced only large, established, old companies can be in these big spaces ripe for disruption. Maybe they are right, maybe not us, maybe not now. It's not easy but it seems inevitable at some point.

If it still survives 5) terrorist plane crash on the core, 6) Meteor impact, maybe people will feel a little less paranoid about nuclear energy :)

I agree with your comment, I'm constantly baffled by people who claim Nuclear Power is not safe.

Actually Chernobyl was (partially) a nuclear explosion. Lots of misunderstanding about this, even among nuclear engineers.

I love that you bring up the global scale. It's in the global scale things sound daunting. But it's in the global scale that what is really important becomes clear.

Maybe the most important fact it all boils down to is energy density. Nuclear is literally millions of times more energy dense than any other energy source. Practically, that means millions of times less waste. (See let's talk about physics baby http://www.thingsworsethannuclearpower.com/2013/02/energyden... )

Envision a world powered entirely by coal. Not pretty. Entirely by solar? Appealing PR, but besides being not at all possible it has it's own immense ewaste issues and those never decay away and that waste certainly cannot produce energy. Entirely by hydro? That means destruction of perhaps the largest swaths of ecosystems in the world. Etc. Take any qualms about a globe powered by nuclear and then multiply it almost by millions of times for the other sources.

Land use is another huge factor. See this graphic for comparison. http://newenergyandfuel.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/LandU...

As far as security forces, etc, it wouldn't likely scale like that but let's assume it does. Are numbers like a million well paying jobs spread worldwide actually daunting? How many military folk end their service time in the US alone each year? I was an intern in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Economics and Manpower so I should remember but I looked it up. There are hundreds of thousands of former service members looking for jobs each year. ( http://www.civilianjobs.com/careeradvice/related.aspx) Thats leaving out more than 6 billion in other people.