Hacker News Reader

Comment by donttrustatoms | Hacker News Reader

You're exactly right, and that's what we designed for with UPower. I would have written the exact same thing when we began talking about doing something in nuclear 5 years ago.

Too many reactors are designed without the market or financing in mind.

We decided on the simplest possible reactor optimized to a size useful to a market in dire need- just MW scale.

It has no pumps, no water in the reactor, and builds upon a legacy of data so that there will be minimal fuel and materials qualification, which adds up very quickly in both time and money.

Why hasn't it been done before? The key, as you bring up, is in manufacturing, simplicity, a relatively new and hugely growing microgrid market that didn't exist much before, and a business model that doesn't require the customer to buy the unit as opposed to power purchase.

View on HN

It's exciting work, to be sure. Before now, the only small-scale nuclear work I'd seen were plutonium batteries (like for powering satellites), which are horrendously expensive and not something you ever want in the hands of Bad Actors.

It looks like UPower is currently targeting environments where traditional power is impractical and lots of power is needed, and plenty of budget is available - remote mines, military installations and such. Do you see a market for urban/residential power grid in the future, too? Or would that be too difficult a squeeze between distributed solar and traditional power plants?

The short answer is yes. We see this as our Tesla roadster (well designed niche product for a market willing to pay, in this case however, desperately in need for a solution that doesn't involve constant shipments of expensive and polluting diesel for loud generators) from which we will streamline and optimize to make our "model 3" so we can produce something to meet and even beat grid prices. It actually isn't a big jump between the two, we have good indication now that it will be possible without much iteration to beat grid prices in all but the cheapest markets. And as you pointed out, the financing at that stage will play a significant part. :)

The problem with anything nuclear is insurance. The only way reactors got insured was because Uncle Sam underwrote them.

Indeed. What insurer could have covered the estimated 137 billion dollar hit [1] from the Fukushima disaster? The Japanese government has had to step in, to the very real financial detriment of its people and their nation.

[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-11-07/fukushima-...

Well, it's cheaper than Greece.

(Nuclear reactors have the same "too big to fail" problem as the banking system: the expected value is positive, but the worst-case is a huge open ended liability and toxic asset)

Also, Chernobyl was one of the reasons Soviet Union collapsed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com