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UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries

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Re: UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries

#31

Post by pjscott »

beefman wrote: post #16
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.

The term "nuclear battery" here refers to the operational model: the modules are shipped out from a factory, hooked up on-site, run with minimal intervention, and then shipped back after several years for refurbishing and refueling. This centralizes construction and maintenance, which is important when the reactors themselves are so small.

Re: UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries

#32

Post by mkempe »

LAMike wrote: post #5

So in 5 years it will be possible to buy a nuclear box that can power 2,000 homes? I bet there will be "startup cities" made from scratch using these containers that will power a small community and help people live off the grid. Sounds like something I'd be down to try out

Think our next frontier -- Martian colonies.

Re: UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries

#33

Post by pjscott »

omegaworks wrote: post #29

>with some processing Weasel words. Reprocessing spent nuclear fuel introduces a MASSIVE regulatory boondoggle.

True, but you can always use a once-through fuel cycle at first.

EDIT: It turns out that the article was inaccurate, and they won't be reprocessing. Consider this comment happily retracted!

Re: UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries

#34

Post by jddw »

pjscott wrote: post #28
dadiomov wrote: post #18

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…

They're aiming at niches where they won't be competing directly with more conventional power plants. Their web site claims [1] that it's intended "for remote and distributed generation where energy costs can exceed 30 cents/kWh, and power is needed 24/7". [1] http://www.upowertech.com/p/technology.html

Precisely right. Traditional utilities want something with a long operating track record, something hard for new designs to do off the bat. But going where the reactor is 5x cheaper than the next best option changes that. Plus many of these places want combined heat and power, so the design needs to be flexible on the thermal end.

Re: UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries

#35

Post by beefman »

dadiomov wrote: post #18

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…

The amount of security etc. required per site is subject to change. But even a 1GW site can be more cheaply assembled from 300 units coming off an assembly line than from one unit built in-place. The economics of this were discovered in the 18th century.

Re: UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries

#36

Post by beefman »

jddw wrote: post #30
beefman wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'It can burn any fuel' is just code for 'we have no real core design yet'. But it doesn't matter, because no nuclear fuel is significantly better than any other, and they're all thousands of times better than alternatives. Thorium is always used in mixed cores. An accelerator-driven thorium reactor will contain uranium from breeding even if no uranium is ever loaded into it.

There are core designs for low enriched uranium loading, mixed thorium loading, and spent fuel loadings. Have to make sure a fuel design works before it's claimed to work.

With 12 years of burnup? I've been having trouble getting burnup codes to handle thorium. What are you using? Apparently I should be using Serpent.

But anyway, 12 years is too long, even if it's feasible. Something like 4 years should be better, due to the learning curve on these. For instance, think of a reactor in the field as a ship on a long trip while technology at home continues to improve

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wait_Calculation

Edit: The lower the enrichment, and the lower the excess reactivity, the better.

Re: UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries

#38

Post by dadiomov »

jddw wrote: post #34
pjscott wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're aiming at niches where they won't be competing directly with more conventional power plants. Their web site claims [1] that it's intended "for remote and distributed generation where energy costs can exceed 30 cents/kWh, and power is needed 24/7". [1] http://www.upowertech.com/p/technology.html

Precisely right. Traditional utilities want something with a long operating track record, something hard for new designs to do off the bat. But going where the reactor is 5x cheaper than the next best option changes that. Plus many of these places want combined heat and power, so the design needs to be flexible on the thermal end.

there's definitely an opportunity in providing thermal at factories. lots of remote sites in India and China have their own purpose-built coal plants that could potentially use something like that...I have a harder time seeing the financing line up for serving remote villages that can't afford any power today. In those cases finance will always flow to smaller increment technologies, even if they're higher $/kWh, like solar + battery or diesel

Re: UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries

#39

Post by rjdagost »

There is a company called Gen4 Energy (formerly Hyperion Power Generation) that has been pursuing the "nuclear battery" concept for 7 or so years: http://www.gen4energy.com Regulatory approval has been elusive, and that's for a team of 30+ year nuclear industry veterans. The challenges in this industry are brutal, I hope UPower has deep enough pockets and extreme patience to shake up the industry.

Re: UPower (YC S14) Is Building Nuclear Batteries

#40

Post by XorNot »

jddw wrote: post #22
djb_hackernews wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Exactly right. Reactors are not attractive targets and this is very robust.

More importantly, 9/11 hit the WTC. When it did everyone immediately said "imagine if they'd hit a nuclear reactor".

But they didn't. They could've, but they didn't (and it also wouldn't have done very much damage). The reality is that even at the largest conceivable scales, nuclear security as implemented is not threatened by violent terrorism or direct action, so much as leaky side-channels (scientists selling off isotopes on the side).

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