I recently quit my salary job after 16 years and am consulting in nuclear engineering now. I have a few passion projects that I'm working on (between the somewhat substantial consulting work that came out of the woodwork):
- Nuclear Reactor Starter Kit --- an open source set of procedures, processes, templates, and maybe even some IT advice that should help newcomers start companies with nuclear quality assurance programs easily and quickly while also making a new format in which nuclear companies can share lessons learned in efficiency.
- Reactor Database --- similar to the iaeas PRIS but focused on reactor development rather than power reactors. Will include nuclear startup company tracking with details gleaned from statements and maybe extrapolated where necessary from simple simulations. Will include things like fuel cost and licensing progress. This way people can more easily separate vaporware from real nuclear, and keep track of promises vs delivery.
Very nice! I ejected from the nuclear industry almost a decade ago and have played around in Healthcare/IoT/Oil&Gas/Finance software tech, but I'd love to figure out how to apply these skills to nuclear energy somehow.
Also - love whatisnuclear.com! About 10 years ago, I tried my hand at creating a generalized JS-based viz system (see examples in https://github.com/ahd985/ssv), but could never figure out a market/path forward for it.
Just curious: as a SWE, what are the prospects like in this field? What kind of background would be necessary to step in and what does the demand look like?
I've always been fascinated by nuclear and it seems like a field that's never going to be not needed, but I kind of suck at physics and chemistry.
There's a ton of money pouring into nuclear power right now, both fusion and fission. There are dozens of small VC-funded startups now in addition to the more "traditional" billionaire-funded nuclear startups. Each of them need SWEs to help with automating the physics/design simulations, document creation/management, plant design configuration/change management, QA compliance, construction management, experiment IT (instruments, controls, data collection, data reduction). Most companies have nuclear engineers like me who picked up some software skills along the way, but I've found it's always a huge benefit to bring in some nuclear-interested SWEs to help get things running with best practices. Some SWEs I've hired in the past felt a little isolated, but others have engaged well with the nuclear and mechanical engineers and had a great time. Be prepared for some weird fights with nuclear IT teams who are extra afraid of criminal penalties associated with export control laws.
Do you have any general advice for countries considering pursuing nuclear energy programs? Ex. Estonia is actively working on legislation to enable nuclear energy production (likely through a small modular reactor) and it'd be great to hear an experts advice on how to best pursue developing a domestic nuclear energy industry.
Also curious if there are any parts of the industry you think are particularly exciting and/or neglected (ex. there was just a startup that raised gobs of money to enrich HALEU since most of it used to come from Russia)
It's a huge topic. The UAE is probably the biggest most recent example of what has to be done to set up the legal and regulatory pathway and then move into good technical execution. I think they did it really well; bringing in experts to help, choosing a well-understood tried-and-true design rather than a cutting edge Gen IV never-before-tried technology, building 4 in a row rather than just one. Of course that all takes an absurd amount of capital.
I think the most neglected thing in the nuclear industry is the ABWR design. It's a good-enough boiling water reactor that Hitachi was able to construct with record-breaking speed.
I wonder if you could share some advice as to how to translate a marginal exposure to nuclear manufacturing and nde of nuclear grade components over the years(as a mechanical engineer) into a full-time position? What certs/specific experience/domain knowledge are the upcoming startups looking for in a hire? I'm a third-worlder btw. I love the field and champion its prospects to unwitting listeners :), but not much potential out where I am.
I wanted to do energy stuff and happened to be at a college that had a nuclear engineering dept. The peer advisor told me to take a class in the dept and I loved it.
No I don't think it'd help that much with a weapons program. The starter kit would be mostly focused on QA, compliance, configuration management, cost modeling, etc. and would not include any non-public information about like how to optimize a core for high-quality plutonium or U-233 production or how to do the chemistry needed to separate plutonium from other actinides and fission products. And of course it would say nothing at all about weapon design. That said, vast quantities of normal core design knowledge are widely available.
What are your thoughts on SMRs as a concept in general? I’ve seen startup hype in this space but also watched YouTube engineers say it’s basically a non feasible approach.
SMR is now a very general term, ranging a few megawatts to 450. We also have the term 'microreactors' now which are like 0.1-10 MWe or so. We have built dozens of microreactors and small reactors in these ranges in the past. Invariably, they were all too expensive to keep operating.
Major microreactor examples include PM-3A, which powered McMurdo station in antarctica for some years, SM-1A in Alaska, PM-2A in Greenland, PM-1 in Wyoming, truck-mounted ML-1 in Idaho, the ill-fated SL-1 microreactor in Idaho, the prototype SM-1 in DC, and the MH-1A floating power barge in Panama.
The smaller power reactors like the Peach Bottom HTGR ran fine, but were still too small to compete with their GW-scale neighbors. They all shut down. Larger advanced reactors like Ft. St. Vrain shut down due to operations and maintenance challenges.
Nuclear history is littered with failed advanced reactor projects. This doesn't mean they can't be done well, but it does mean that it's not easy. The guys out there right now hyping up that they're going to change the world but who have never handled radiation are in for a big reckoning. I hope they succeed, but they probably will not.
I do think small reactors are a good way to re-establish technical know-how. If you can make a few fringe small reactors and sell them in remote areas, then that's a great way to re-bootstrap people who do know how to build and run new types of reactors. For commodity power, e.g. powering data centers, this will help people be able to build larger more economical reactors.
Powering datacenters with microreactors is very likely an impossibly expensive proposition due to inherently poor chain reaction neutronics. Too many neutrons leak out.
- Nuclear Reactor Starter Kit --- an open source set of procedures, processes, templates, and maybe even some IT advice that should help newcomers start companies with nuclear quality assurance programs easily and quickly while also making a new format in which nuclear companies can share lessons learned in efficiency.
- Reactor Database --- similar to the iaeas PRIS but focused on reactor development rather than power reactors. Will include nuclear startup company tracking with details gleaned from statements and maybe extrapolated where necessary from simple simulations. Will include things like fuel cost and licensing progress. This way people can more easily separate vaporware from real nuclear, and keep track of promises vs delivery.