
Think Hiring a Ruby Developer is Hard? Try Staffing a Nuclear Reactor Startup - wfrick
http://bostinno.com/2012/03/22/think-hiring-a-ruby-developer-is-hard-try-staffing-a-nuclear-reactor-startup/
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kevinalexbrown
I'm close with someone who was offered a position at a nuclear startup
NuScale, that aims to manufacture cookie-cutter, modular nuclear reactors,
where you scale the power plant by adding more reactors over time as your
needs change, and ship the old spent ones off.

As I understand it, part of the problem in hiring is that for a nuclear
startup you really need experienced engineers as you go into producing working
prototypes. Depending on the position, they don't necessarily need explicit
nuclear experience - my relative didn't have it - but they _do_ need a proven
track record of not majorly screwing up _ever_ , and that requires experience
you can usually only get working for years in real engineering environments.
There can be no 'oops, we messed up the privacy requirements' apology or
people die, meltdowns happen, and the company gets the biggest of red flags.

That's not to say you need to be old to start a nuclear company, but that you
will probably need to work with older engineers, who are harder to hire,
settled in their jobs, and scattered across the US, with mortgages, families,
and the like.

~~~
wisty
This is why I don't think nuclear power is the future. Renewable power can
afford to be innovative. Nuclear power will never innovate as fast. Even if
it's better than wind right now, you can't have people hack on it, or
manufacture in the cheapest country (I hope), or have small countries regulate
its use in a cost efficient way.

Of course, it's great for the countries who already have it up and running,
and those countries should also look at the latest generations, and the next
generation which are being designed (which should be better and safer in every
way that the old ones which meltdown when a tsunami hits them).

I love asking pro-nuclear Australians which level of government (federal or
state) should regulate nuclear power, and who should be the minister in
charge.

~~~
demian
Besides the point brought up by jeltz about what "renewable" includes, I fail
to see how the speed of innovation, or the fact that people can "hack it",
will determine which energy source is "the future".

Argentina, a developing country with a history of social turmoil and a
relatively high level of goverment corruption, has been using nuclear power
efficently since the '70s.

Probably "the future" will need mixed energy generation. It won't be _only_
nuclear nor _only_ renewable.

~~~
wisty
Given the life expectancy of reactors, we'll probably not live to see the last
nuclear reactors decommissioned (unless we end up as cyborgs). We'll probably
need more of it in the next 20 years (what's the alternative? gas is running
out, coal is just dirty, and renewables have issues).

But I see renewable power getting a lot cheaper than nuclear. It's easier to
cut costs. It's easier to experiment with new stuff. More automation will
bring the costs down, while nuclear tends to be one-off projects (note,
modular nuclear might level the playing field a bit, but you can bet that they
won't be laser-focused on bringing the price right down).

Energy is all about costs. Nuclear power is unlikely to drop in cost as much
as solar and wind.

------
ScotterC
I'm so glad there are nuclear startups. There's so much to be done in this
field. It's enormously tough to disrupt but licensing a design might be a
start.

Talent is extraordinarily hard to find for this. All the great engineers with
domain experience are starting to retire. The ones that are left are extremely
risk averse. You have to attempt to poach from GE or Westinghouse.

I worked for Westinghouse for two years doing Pipe Analysis and Fracture
Mechanics. There are funny things that happen to steel piping at 2250 psi and
600 degrees Fahrenheit. Only nukes are familiar with the stresses and
environmental fatigues that can happen in that environment over an 80 year
period.

~~~
forgottenpaswrd
"There are funny things that happen to steel piping at 2250 psi and 600
degrees Fahrenheit."

And why we have to use steel piping at 153atm and 300C?

The fact is that we are using a design that is totally obsolete and designed
for creating nuclear bombs, not for giving us energy.

The good thing about startups is that they could think different, use
creativity to innovate and invent new methods. Einstein was not very
intelligent a la Von Newman, contrary to popular belief, but he was super
creative.

Creativity is destroyed in academia.

~~~
ScotterC
Hold on there buddy. All Western designed PWRs or BWRs (which is nearly all of
them) are not designed to be yielding bombs. Their neutron flux is simply not
high enough to give enough enrichment.

Two other types of plants you might be thinking of when taking bomb materials
into account. The russian design for Chernobyl was meant to produce
electricity and bomb fuel which is why it had a graphite moderator which
creates a very high neutron flux.

The other one is the sodium cooled breeder reactor which we chose instead of
the molten salt design discussed in the article. The sodium breeder was good
at making plutonium but still was never designed to have that plutonium
removed in any usable fashion. Sodium is a tricky substance it reacts with
water violently. The french still have a plant or two going as do the Chinese
but it's really not a stellar design.

Now, I agree about the temps and pressures being unnecessary. The reason for
these is about efficiency of scale. In a power grid like America's where we
need 1 gigawatt and greater plants, plus with licensing a plant being so
difficult, you build the biggest baddest plant you can which can output the
most power. This means you go with the highest temps and pressures while still
being ultra safe to create a more power efficient reactor.

Smaller reactors which would be better for the power grids of the world. Like
250 mega watts would not need these extreme environments. There are some great
designs for a back of trailer truck reactor which can just hook up to a coal
plant's secondary systems (steam turbines and such).

The best part of nuclear startups is nuclear is not a 'if' question. It's a
when. I just hope we can disrupt quickly enough to bring that sort of power
production here sooner rather then later.

~~~
uvdiv
_"Now, I agree about the temps and pressures being unnecessary. The reason for
these is about efficiency of scale. In a power grid like America's where we
need 1 gigawatt and greater plants, plus with licensing a plant being so
difficult, you build the biggest baddest plant you can which can output the
most power. This means you go with the highest temps and pressures while still
being ultra safe to create a more power efficient reactor. [P] Smaller
reactors which would be better for the power grids of the world. Like 250 mega
watts would not need these extreme environments."_

This isn't actually accurate. Reactor core water is pressurized to raise the
boiling point -- at 0.1 MPa (atmospheric) it's 100 ºC, at 15 MPa (reactor
coolant) it's 342 ºC, so they can push water to around 300 ºC and still keep
it liquid in the core. The higher the temperature, the higher (in general) the
efficiency of converting heat to work (in the case of nuclear plants,
efficiency of the steam turbine). This is pretty much independent of the size
of the reactor.

(Why liquid water? One huge reason is neutronics (the nuclear part): a very
high density of hydrogen nuclei (H in H2O) is useful for scattering neutrons,
which slows them down to speeds where they get absorbed by heavy nuclei
(reactor fuel) and start fission reactions. [This isn't necessary: in fact
"fast reactors" work with neutrons flying at relativistic speeds. But it's
much easier.])

300 ºC is actually pretty cool; the steam from coal power plants gets up to
around 600 ºC [1], and internal-combustion gas turbines can reach temperatures
of even 1,600 ºC [2]. Water-cooled reactors are held back in efficiency by the
need to keep water liquid at core temperatures. Conceptually they can get a
bit further by pressurizing water to supercritical conditions [3], at about
510-550 ºC/25 MPa; these aren't being built. (These are fast reactors; the
density of this supercritical water is very low, about 0.1 kg/L, so it's a
weaker moderator).

[1] [http://www.ge-
energy.com/products_and_services/products/stea...](http://www.ge-
energy.com/products_and_services/products/steam_turbines/fossil_g_series.jsp)

[2] <http://www.mhi.co.jp/en/news/story/1105261435.html>

[3] <http://www.gen-4.org/Technology/systems/scwr.htm>

~~~
ScotterC
Thanks for the citations.

Btw are you the same uvdiv that writes on capacity factor? Used to read that
blog all the time when I was in industry. Always liked the number focus.

~~~
uvdiv
Yeah I'm the same, thanks! :)

------
Loic
Just cross the Atlantic, open a subsidiary in France. You will find there a
lot of extremely qualified engineers for everything nuclear related.

~~~
starfox
Are they still using Francs for their units of reactivity, or did that get
changed to Euros as well?

~~~
starfox
I'm not sure if this got modded down because people think I'm being facetious,
but I'm seriously wondering what happened with that. For people who don't
know, every country in the world, besides France, used "Dollars" for their
units of reactivity:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Slotin#The_Dollar_unit_of...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Slotin#The_Dollar_unit_of_reactivity)

France, on the other hand, used "Francs". Conveniently, the exchange rate was
1:1. I'd be surprised if they went and changed everything to Euro's now, but I
haven't heard anything firsthand from French nuclear engineers.

~~~
csomar
How is your first comment relevant? Answer that, and you'll figure out why you
were down voted.

~~~
starfox
Well, I'm sure it's something that could be worked out, but there will likely
be naming issues between French and Non-French nuclear engineers working
together. It seems relevant to me, given that the topic was to bring French
engineers into a U.S. startup.

------
larsberg
The older age demographic may work in their favor --- the "about to retire"
crowd might be willing to work with them on pretty favorable terms, especially
if they are flexibile on location and hours. It would be a heck of a lot more
interesting and rewarding than consulting part-time for Westinghouse or GE,
which is what they would probably otherwise do.

I've been thinking a lot about this kind of problem because the foundry
industry is in much the same state. My father has been working in it
(metallurgy, process/lean, product design and test, etc.) for ~45 years and is
retiring in a few years. The foundry industry is also a field with basically
nobody between the ages of 25-55 in the US, and he's thinking about what he
will do to keep busy once the pension and social security kick in, apart from
the obvious occasional contracting gig.

------
jph
Ninja rockstar wanted for lean startup in nuclear sector. Must know MVC
framework (Matter/Valence/Controller), ATOM feeds, and the Ruby "split"
method. Perks include free energy drinks.

~~~
maaku
Must have 10 years experience with Waste-Annihilating Molten Salt Reactors.

------
mhd
I'm a bit scared that there might be "rockstar" nuclear engineers out there.

~~~
res
I might be wrong, but I was under the impression that engineering, with the
exception of software engineering, was still very much a "suit and tie" field.

~~~
arethuza
Wearing a tie is often expressly forbidden in a lot of environments.

------
kemiller
I wonder how politically difficult it would be to get one of these built near
Yucca Mountain. Given that a) it's already a nuclear hotzone in the minds of
the public, and b) this offers some possibility of improving the situation
while generating exportable power. You'd think this would be an interesting
prospect to at least one philanthropically-minded billionaire.

------
squozzer
Not sure if the talent pool would fit the startup culture but the US Navy
might be worth investigating. Or the Russian, British, or French navies.

~~~
philwelch
The Navy trains operator-engineers, not design engineers. They are indeed one
of the biggest sources of operator-engineers, though.

------
uvdiv
The photo @11:30 wasn't identified correctly. She's talking about spent fuel,
high-level waste ("very big problem"), but the photo slide is absolutely not
that at all; it is stored depleted uranium hexafluoride, a byproduct of
isotope enrichment. (The site is the USEC gaseous diffusion plant in Paducah,
Kentucky, USA). Comparatively benign chemical waste.

(Maybe I misunderstood, but the talk seemed to imply that spent fuel storage
was being shown. It wasn't.)

<http://g.co/maps/b9haq>

<http://www.usec.com/media/photo-gallery>

<http://web.ead.anl.gov/uranium/faq/storage/faq16.cfm>

------
achy
The majority of AECL (the CANDU reactor team) is un- or under employed after
the buyout from the Canadian government - that's an entire workforce to tap
into.

~~~
ylem
I thought CANDU was acquired by a private company--do you foresee another
Canadian research reactor after Chalk River?

~~~
achy
It was, but the workforce was severely slashed, and (due to low market
necessity) would have been moreso if not for a unionized work force.

~~~
ylem
That I wasn't aware of--how is Deep River holding up?

------
drucken
Anyone know if this is a thorium-based Molten Salt Reactor?

If so, why is the now quite well-known MSR advocate Kirk Sorensen not involved
in this project, but instead started his own company (Flibe Energy) to design
and produce a thorium MSR?

Still, I have a feeling that two US private startups is no match vs Chinese
government MSR let alone other nuclear energy technology spending.

~~~
RandallBrown
I think this has to do with using nuclear waste from currently running
reactors to generate electricity. (If thorium is part of that waste and you
already knew that sorry)

~~~
drucken
Thorium MSRs process nuclear waste from current production reactors too.
Sorry, I assumed people reading about this article new that.

------
CookWithMe
I never thought someone would use something associated with "Fail early, fail
often" in the same sentence with nuclear reactors.

------
amalag
I thought thorium was the frontier in nuclear reactors.

~~~
Symmetry
Its the frontier of reactors-that-don't-explode. In the short term, our laws
were written with light water reactors in mind, so anybody who wants to build
a thorium reactor is going to have to build all the same expensive safety
features that light water reactors need, plus the special metallurgy that
molten salt reactors need. So basically it doesn't make sense until something
changes.

~~~
JoshTriplett
> In the short term, our laws were written with light water reactors in mind,
> so anybody who wants to build a thorium reactor is going to have to build
> all the same expensive safety features that light water reactors need, plus
> the special metallurgy that molten salt reactors need.

It always annoys me that laws on safety requirements go into implementation
details rather than stating the desired result. If the requirements simply
said that "an independent audit must show that the safety exceeds the
following thresholds: ...", safer technologies wouldn't incur the additional
overhead you describe.

------
ses
These two have admirable goals but I don't think I'm alone in finding it hard
to justify the terms 'nuclear reactor' and 'startup' in the same sentence
together. It's incredibly judgemental I know, but I have a hard time taking
those two young PhD students on a stage talking about nuclear power
seriously... and I'm a young person myself. It just makes me think, will
anyone take such a business seriously if they brand themselves as a tech
startup? IMHO they would do better to actively steer themselves away from
being seen in this light.

------
KevinMS
Don't perpetuate the myth that ruby developers are difficult to find.

~~~
ericb
Have you tried to hire one in the Boston area lately? Our second Senior rails
dev position has has been open for about 5 months.

~~~
KevinMS
So are you saying that absolutely nobody that can do the job has applied? Or
have you turned away qualified applicants because they aren't a "cultural fit"
or properly credentialed? I'm betting on the later.

~~~
ericb
Well, our last developer hire had no degree of any kind, is 20 while everyone
else is 36-50 and he is working out great. We've had 1 resume in the last 2
months come in. I wouldn't want to spoil your pre-conceived notions, though.

edit: By the way, I read your comment history. We do all our hiring through
recruiters because we are a small team without the time to chase talent--our
interest and time is spent coding.

Maybe that is the issue--you won't work with recruiters, and most ruby shops
are small, so they outsource hiring to recruiters. As a datapoint for you, I
got this job through a recruiter, and I'm quite happy with it. Recruiters got
me several other interviews with decent places as well. There are decent
recruiters out there with real jobs--you just have to use your gut about who
isn't sketchy. We gave this opening to 3 different recruiters that we work
with--maybe they called you and you ignored them.

------
scheff
How hard can it be when that screw-up in sector 7G down at the old Springfield
plant can keep his job after all these years?

------
vinayan3
I thought this was a joke... I guess not.

------
billsix
Hiring a Ruby Developer is not hard.

------
cheez
Smart, good looking and ambitious.

I should just give up.

