donttrustatoms

I edited the above comment instead of replying here (whoops). I realized that you thought the structure was glass. No wonder. It's not, it's steel panels. Modular construction. There are optional solar panels on the exterior, maybe that's what you saw. Please see the other comments on why having a heated, lighted building space is important in the communities we've gotten to know. Bitcoin isn't BS when it's a first moving customer, even while we are actively working with plenty of other customers you'll recognize well, when the time comes to announce. It takes time.

Haha not really. :) I was pretty much laughing at myself, responding to the commenter's idea that Oklo leadership shouldn't be spending cycles on building parameters with architects (i did - it's arguably important on a number of levels - security, regulatory, cost/finance/constructability, human factors, community relations etc...) but here i am spending cycles on like HN comments instead of other work which of course we do all weekend anyway.

Thanks for the followup as well. I'll just respond on a couple of the points:

- you don't see these detailed core schematics with analyses because in our design they are designated export controlled (ECI) as I mentioned. It doesn't mean that they aren't in there or that they haven't been extensively performed and documented.

- the endeavor (and cost) of downblending EBR-II fuel over many years has been based on the national and state nonproliferation agreements to downblend this high enriched used fuel from EBR-II. Don't confuse that endeavor with processing used, low-enriched fuel from existing plants. In the one case, the downblending work was being performed for many years in the interest of downblending before storing as waste (except now, instead, it can be used to produce clean power and demonstrate a FOAK fission plant). In the other case, recycling existing waste, we are already working with DOE (and starting NRC interactions) about deploying recycling existing nuclear waste for fuel. I can tell you it's incredibly cost effective for a fast reactor to utilize the TRU in existing low-enriched waste and that is our goal for not just feel-good reasons but also for economic reasons. It is not false nor disingenuous.

It's true that the burnup is far less than would be ultimately most economically efficient. The FOAK was intended to serve as a bit of an MVP as I already mentioned. But it's key that larger doesn't mean less safety. The fundamentals of the safety in this case lie in how the fuel has inherent shutdown characteristics, which were proven true of EBR-II (at 65 MWth) even as it's true of Aurora (<10MWth). Many different plants have different mechanisms of safety at various size ranges!

Thanks for engaging and your thoughtful responses.

I can't say what kinds of security analyses we had to do to meet regulatory requirements, because there's a host of things you have to do to even know what security requirements there are. That's not even close to publicly available, for good reason.

I can say we have to analyze to massive vehicle bombs, armed assault, etc.

Here's what the possibly interesting, counterintuitive analysis showed. If you have a plant where a massive bomb can't cause damage to exceed regulatory standards (...we are talking about a truly miniscule amount of material here in this micro fission powerhouse in comparison with the nuclear plants you are probably thinking of... literally not more than a meter tall and wide, underground, below layers and tonnage of concrete and steel) and if an armed assault can't cause damage like that either, are you doing a favor by having a host of armed people on site? Probably not, in fact. Insider risk is then too large. There you go!

(totally agree with no "move fast and break things" here. I'm about 8 years into working on this company and still see many years ahead. we wouldn't be doing anything great if we weren't bringing forward the safest emission-free power plant to reality)

You're exactly right here, and I'd say this is well put in several areas.

I'll add that supercritical CO2 sounds like science fiction to people, but it's actually been pretty well demonstrated at the small sizes. The scaling up is what needs to happen if it's used at sizes beyond a few MWe. We've worked with vendors who have these available at the <5 MWe scale.

And I'll second what you're saying about subsidy. The incredible subsidies out there, if I didn't care about fission, would make me agree with those that are effectively anti-nuclear. If those hundreds millions and billions to single companies are necessary to * ever * get a single nuclear plant built, it just doesn't add up that it will be successful without all that propping it up. I agree it isn't necessary to subsidize, and that's how we believed it was important to run our company to date.

In this case, I'll name names, and I hope this isn't taken in a malicious sense because it isn't meant that way. But I've always wondered why Bill Gates, one of the wealthiest humans on the planet, would go to Capitol Hill for money for his nuclear company. I think I've learned that it's for reasons along the lines of what you said there. Creating a self-sustaining government program goes a long way to guaranteeing that the government cares about your company, and anyone else along the trail of $. I'm not blaming that, of course it is smart, it is just intriguing what paths occur.

PS also agree on "carbfix" - that while I'm all for all solutions to climate issues, it is wild to me too how much press that carbfix gets too in comparison to at least my perception of its reality of potential. But i suspect it goes back also to a great govt relations piece...

It's a good thing then that we analyzed to such extreme events as completely losing everything above ground, whether due to an avalanche, a tornado, an earthquake, etc, etc. :) The inherent safety in the fuel type means that there would still be zero dose. (for more info on the tests that showed this result originally in historic research reactors in operation: http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/pdfs/PlentifulEnergy.pdf)

PS I realized that you thought the structure was glass. No wonder. It's not, it's steel panels. Modular construction. There are optional solar panels on the exterior, maybe that's what you saw.

Hey Gloriana, I'm sure PR experts would say I'm probably not making a good decision responding here, and I haven't even had anything to drink, but I'll take a stab at sharing a bit on each of your points. I hope this response will be taken in the good faith in which it is given.

1) There's certainly many hundreds of pages/slides in the fully public docket on the NRC website, but the easiest source for the most information in one place is our application itself: bit.ly/AuroraCOLA. I don't expect anyone to want to read that entire thing either, but it's there. The only main things that are withheld are generally either: export controlled (defined by the Department of Energy, and we take it seriously) which includes detailed core maps, or security-related information (defined by the NRC). But the rest of it is all there. If there's something you want to know that isn't there, I'm happy to respond.

2) We are building our designs off the 30 years of experience and data with EBR-II and other fast reactors (http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/pdfs/PlentifulEnergy.pdf). EBR-II was ended prematurely for political reasons and had plenty of life left. The EBR-II showed how electricity could be put on the grid with higher uptimes than even the commercial fleet at the time. Unfortunately, I can't give details, but let's just say other major developers of historical fast reactors didn't release their economics because they didn't want it to cannibalize their other plants. But you don't need to believe that either. Our business model is to provide power via PPA so if the economics don't work for the customer we simply won't have a deal. Our FOAK plants are economic already in remote or higher cost areas, but the real key to our economics is when we are able to recycle existing waste, a fact unique to fast reactors.

3) 1% was really to be conservative for the FOAK, to try to make the licensing of the FOAK simpler within the datasets we had. I assume you know a number of SFRs have worked toward establishing datasets for up to and beyond 15% burnup. I really don't know where the number of 100 MT of uranium comes from. We would have <5MT total of fuel for 20 years, with <1T of that being uranium. 1.5MWex24hrx350days/yrx20 years is something like 250 GWe?

4) Oof. Yes, fast reactors can consume the fuel from today's reactors, and even though that supply chain isn't established, the FOAK is using waste fuel from EBR-II. I can assure you it is not pristine. No one else wants it. :) But we are working together with the DOE on a project with Argonne National Lab to begin work on the recycling from today's reactors (https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-announces-over-65-millio...).

5) Hm. well, I want to be positive here: I'd argue there's a difference between our first customer announcement being Compass and a TEDx with my alma mater, and moving forward for years with something that fellow students and professors said had fundamental issues since grad school, which a professor finally leaked to the press out of frustration (and yes, we might have been fellow students). It's funny, I always said we should never do a TED too because they seem so smarmy, but a friend at my undergrad and the students there were organizing a TEDx and honestly it was cute and was just a fun opportunity to go back there for various reasons. We've been working with other more traditional customers in ways that we can't announce yet. But, we are working with other customers you'll likely approve of more. Remote communities as well as big companies just truly do need reliable power and they do want it to be emission-free.

6. They did seem to go out of their way didn't they. More will come on this once we are able to put out our own account too after 30 days, just because we should have the opportunity to set the record as well. But, to put myself in their shoes, they are trying to defend against an appeal or legal action. Neither of which we really have interest in, we just want to try again, move forward.

7. I responded to this with Paul. TL;DR: I don't think an attractive and functional building with all required security and operational characteristics means we are "down playing the seriousness." If you've been out to these truly poor, remote communities in the Arctic circle as I have, you'll see why they care about having heated, lighted, indoor areas in the long winters. And when the analysis shows the safety and security required, why wouldn't we offer that to them?

Well, there you go. Feel free to pick it apart but hopefully it added some context to the press releases and pretty pictures and whatnot.

Fair point, but when we examined just having everything underground, it was more expensive actually. Once you consider operational realities in a remote environment (especially in permafrost), it is beneficial to have power conversion equipment indoors, offices, a bathroom, storage areas, etc. and then you're talking a building above ground anyway. There is security protection built in too that I can't elaborate on.

It would seem that both could be possible, but you're the expert here. ;) We didn't have to spend much time or money on an actually nice looking design, and the a-frame has a lot of practicalities I'm happy to talk about more (modular construction, resilience against snow, useful angle for the solar panels, strength for the internal cranes). (and yes, the power generating equipment, offices, and other space, is inside)

I guess then again here I am as part of the leadership engaging in communicating with the HN community on a friday night and hopefully transparently answering questions. I guess I can't help myself! I do think the public needs to both learn about the realities of fission, and I don't think it has to be ugly.

It's a good conjecture, Paul. One might assume that low probability events were a major issue. With a design that is first of a kind, and given that the proven inherent safety characteristics, Oklo could analyze to the most extreme events (as you know, EBR-II showed how this fuel type, with no flowing coolant, and no shutdown systems, would inherently shut itself down http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/pdfs/PlentifulEnergy.pdf).

In this case, that meant assuming that everything above ground was completely gone. The building, the secondary side (power conversion equipment etc), and all human intervention, were all assumed gone. On top of that, Oklo analyzed the simultaneous loss of one of 3 independent shutdown systems. This is obviously a much higher bar than any existing nuclear plant, and for good reason: our mission is to build a new kind of plant with these inherent safety characteristics.

There might be a reason why there wasn't a lot of detail on sodium fires - there is no pool of sodium. The heat pipes use potassium. :) Oklo did tests on what happens in air, if sodium heat pipes were fully breached with huge holes and interacted directly with air. I was there. We just straight up had incredible amounts of energy hitting the heat pipe from myriad solar mirrors. It was pretty fun to test advanced fission with solar thermal. Anyway, there was a little bit of smoke, and actually the heat pipes kept functioning far longer than even the heat pipe expert expected, because the reacted sodium kept self-cauterizing the hole. In this reactor's case, the heat pipes would be in an inert environment, but it was interesting to see what would happen if somehow it were just pulverized in an open outdoor field.

There are roughly 40 external events that had to be analyzed: earthquakes, wind, tornadoes, seiche, avalanches, landslides, wildfires, you get the idea. What happens in our methods was that the worst possible event was analyzed. We took seismic accelerations worse than ever recorded in the history of the entire united states. It turns out, with a thorough risk analysis (based on risk analysis standards set up in the history of EBR-II and PRISM and others), that assuming you lose literally everything above ground is about the most conservative thing that is within the realm of happening once every million years. Keep in mind we were just seeking a 20 year license for a plant smaller than the MIT research reactor, but low-enriched.

But the end result is as you say, we have learned, they've learned, and we resubmit. We believe deeply that if fission is going to make a difference a commercial plant has to be built before the end of the decade! Happy to answer any questions.

NuScale will, after about 15 years of engagement, receive a design certification later in 2022. After that- they will still need to apply with a combined license application like Oklo did.

I'm the cofounder of Oklo. Thanks for submitting this to HN! Feel free to AMA. :)

I'm the cofounder of Oklo. Thanks for submitting this to HN! Feel free to AMA.

"Fast reactors have always had this potential problem"

- Not really. Check out the dramatic experiments at EBR-II (fast reactor) demonstrating unprotected loss of coolant at full power. It shut itself down. Without damage. And started back up later that day, and operated that year, as a research reactor, with better uptime (capacity factor) than the fleet at the time.

The link clearly states that this is the MCFR - Molten Chloride Fast Reactor.

I think the confusion may lie in that people equate fast reactor with sodium. It's a fast MSR.

Oklo.com. You can sign up for the mailing list there, for updates once info goes live.

Massive batteries is an idiotic idea, as you said. Which is why the constant and large and instantaneous fluctuations from solar and wind are smoothed largely by natural gas. Recommend checking out the video of RFK, Jr saying a solar or wind plant is a gas plant.

Ha ha. Wrong. Actually the biggest demand is remote communities currently burning lots and lots of diesel. Military is way, way too slow moving.

Solar is much cheaper and wind was already cheap, however the question, for both carbon and cost, is what is the price of the renewable intermittents with storage and backup. Batteries and storage in general have not had the step changes in cost and performance that solar has. Backup tends to be fossil plants. Ultimately energy density is a zero sum game for the environment and cost. In more detail:

On storage: Rough calculations show, if there were just enough Powerwalls to backup US peak demand for one hour it would require 10x the global annual mining production of lithium. And that's just one hour. And that doesn't include the electricity production.

On panel material required for production: It's generally estimated that US power, with good transmission, would require enough solar panels to cover the entire state of Massachusetts. Most non solar advocates think it's this square footage that's important. But of course this can largely be put on built land or in deserts so that is a relatively moot point. In fact, I want to get solar panels on my roof. However the real concern is what does this look like in terms of material mining? In immense panel production factories? (which isn't the greenest mfg process ever, likely one of the reasons it is largely done in China)

On mining and transporting material required: Mining is almost entirely powered by fossils, it has to be. And so is most transport. And so is recycling of metals. So the energy density of an energy source really is a zero sum game. If it takes a millionth the material for one source versus the other, that adds up.

On maintenance Then in maintenance, solar farms are truly "farms"- they require a lot of water to wash away dust to operate optimally. A states' worth of water is significant.

On lifetime/end of life First of all the lifetime of a panel is very optimistically 30 years/for a nuclear plant 60-80 years, and for the UPower fuel in particular can be used and recycled repeatedly for about 70+ years.

afterlife/recycling Then in recycling at end of life, and this is why I got so excited about nuclear as a somewhat hippie child growing up around oil companies in Oklahoma, solar is going to require a lot of energy (and fossil fuels or nuclear) to recycle, while nuclear can produce energy in recycling its fuel.

The main import, to me, is: what is the energy density of this energy, and if emitting, how much pollution? Coal is far more energy dense than wind, which is why humans evolved from windmills and wood to coal. But it's so polluting which is why we are all working towards better sources, and the greater energy density (nuclear on order of 2M x any other source) that's roughly 2M less trucks transporting, 2M less mining to do, 2M less recycling, etc. Thats more on the environment than pure cost like you are saying but the costs add up if the full life cycle is taken into account on both sides.

Good question, and believe it or not there have been small reactor concepts that failed for not considering that exact point.

Ours is designed to live in essentially a spent fuel cask. These things have been designed and tested to withstand being dropped from a thousand feet, being hit by missiles or airplanes. Seriously check out youtube there are crazy videos like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBp1FNceTTA

So from the time the reactor leaves our factory, to when it's put underground, till a decade later when it's taken out and shipped back for refueling, the fuel is locked in the reactor which is locked in this uber robust "cask".

This design is a fast reactor which means it can recycle fuel. So beyond its first decade installation we can recycle the fuel approximately 6 cycles before there is any amount of leftover that must be removed. That would be about 70 years, and the volume would be about the size of a basketball (fully glassified) and the lifetime would be on the order of a hundred years. That could be stored at our central facility or another facility, as it would not be weaponizable.

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. :)

That makes sense given those numbers tabulated, but the real question is cost of solar plus backup or storage. One means nothing without the other in terms of both cost and carbon.

Above I illustrated my calculations on just one hour of battery backup for US grid with lithium ion- would require 10x annual global production of lithium. Generally cost of battery backup looks like 35c/kWh and has limitations on duration so it must come back to fossils.

Solar makes a lot of sense if backup/storage/smoothing weren't needed since pv has gone down in cost. It still makes a lot of sense in many off grid applications, and for instance in my home we have solar concentrator lights and I would love to have solar water pre-heaters in the summer. But for on grid the capital requirements are much more complicated than generally illustrated, and ultimately the environmental impacts are greater than apparent at first glance.

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.

Hurricanes also produce Terawatts of energy. The question is the way the energy is turned into electricity, and how it's stored or backed up because an economy requires reliable electricity

I'm a supporter of solar, and trying to get it on my house.

But I also did some back of the envelope calculations that showed, just if we had enough Powerwalls to backup US peak demand for one hour it would require 10x the global annual mining production of lithium. And that's just one hour. And that doesn't include the electricity production.

It's generally estimated that US power, with good transmission, would require enough solar panels to cover the entire state of Massachusetts. I think you're right that it isn't the land cover that would have much effect, after all buildings and roads already cover a lot of land. I think it's sheer material production.

Mining is almost entirely powered by fossils, it has to be. And so is most transport. And so is recycling of metals. So the energy density of an energy source really is a zero sum game. If it takes a millionth the material for one source versus the other, that adds up.

Then in maintenance, solar farms are truly "farms"- they require a lot of water to wash away dust to operate optimally. A states' worth of water is significant.

Then in recycling at end of life, and this is why I got so excited about nuclear as a somewhat hippie child growing up around oil companies in Oklahoma, solar is going to require a lot of energy to recycle, while nuclear can produce energy in recycling its fuel.

The main reality check, to me, is: what is the energy density of this energy, and if emitting, how much pollution? Coal is far more energy dense than wind, which is why humans evolved from windmills and wood to coal. But it's so polluting which is why we are all working towards better sources.

Haha, wow. :) Thanks for the comment. It was meant to signify the communities in the far north or arctic that currently are reliant on very expensive and dirty diesel... Our webpage is under construction probably to be put up in about a week. You can definitely feel free to ask any questions and would appreciate your thoughts on the new one.

Solar photovoltaic has dropped in cost significantly which is awesome for many applications. The problem for an individual or the grid for renewable intermittents is the consistency: the true cost is the cost not just of generation but generation plus storage (or backup).

Batteries have not had the step change in cost vs deliverable, and the question of effective and not carbon intensive recycling of batteries and most e waste remains. If solar is x cents a kWh, must add cost of storage or fossil backup generation to make sense in both terms of cost as well as carbon.

For instance, the expected cost per kWh of the Powerwall is about 35c/kWh which must be added to cost of generation and the maximum amount of time for delivering that power back at peak discharge is only a few hours. Leaves some development still to do for power in the morning after the night, or even for a cloudy day. Solar thermal has run into similar reliability problems as solar photovoltaic.

Yessir!

So true. That's exactly why this is so exciting. With a UPower generator, small communities or neighborhoods could have always on, emission free power for a decade.

and then, as you indicated, with enough clean power, individuals can create desalinated water or even extract water from air. They could cleanly power greenhouses even in the arctic. We could remove carbon from the air.

I am one of the UPower founders. There are two big stories here that most people don't know yet: 1) that a fast reactor can be waste-negative, I.e. transform existing waste to energy. 2) a fast reactor destroys the long lived waste- instead of trying to store waste for a hundred thousand years it's on the order of a hundred.

Both of these are critically important for existing waste but also having an emission free energy source with a closed fuel cycle. No other energy source is better than a hundred thousandth as energy dense and no other energy source could produce clean energy for its own recycling.

It's obviously just a cool technology but more than that it's amazing what that could mean for the environment and remote communities. Even for solar and wind materials mining, these remote mines generally have to burn tons and tons of diesel. That's what we are trying to fight.

The levelized cost of power from the battery is approximately 31 cents, which must of course be added to the cost of the power charging it, solar panels running about 25 cents not including subsidies. The total then, for power that won't discharge for longer than some hours (a day or two of clouds, sol), is approximately 56 cents.

The levelized cost of power from a nuclear power plant over its full lifetime is approximately 3 cents generally with 90% uptime. Advanced nuclear, even very small units designed for offgrid use are estimated at 20 cents and less with mass production and 98% uptime.

The battery/solar combo is nice for remote areas, but otherwise it doesn't seem society is ready to pay 10x multiples for electricity, lose all manufacturing requiring steady power, or multiples of prices for goods as a result, with only increases in emissions to show as natural gas is required to stabilize grid.