
Oklo’s Jacob DeWitte on Building a Nuclear Reactor People Want - ghosh
http://themacro.com/articles/2016/03/jacob-dewitte-oklo-interview/
======
lispm
> We’re building a brand new kind of nuclear reactor that can be used in
> places where power is unreliable, expensive, and dirty.

Afghanistan.

> It’s something that we know people want, and we can build it now, and here’s
> why

Right. These 'people' are called 'Army', 'Airforce' and 'Navy':

[http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-03/mobile-
nucl...](http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-03/mobile-nuclear-
reactors-could-provide-power-and-jet-fuel-military-darpa-says)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Also, people who have a higher bar for "unreliable" e.g. emergency services
want power even after the storm-of-the-century.

~~~
hydrogen18
Don't forget about Waffle House. I'm sure there is a market for an under-the-
sink reactor.

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sideshowb
This is interesting to hear about somebody approaching nuclear with a start-up
type approach. As a lay person I hear about reactor designs that can reduce
nuclear waste and make a truck load more energy off it at the same time, which
leaves me wondering why these things don't get made. Is it all institutional
politics as this article makes out, or is there a safety/proliferation issue
there as well?

If the institutional inertia has a large part to play then a startup model
would be very promising.

~~~
pdkl95
Short answer: it's politics, NIMBY nonsense, and radiophobia.

Longer answer:

Yes, there are obviously safety and proliferation concerns with nuclear power,
but a lot of these are solvable problems. Many industries solve
difficult/dangerous problem all the time. Unfortunately, paranoia and
misleading (or simply wrong) information about radiation made a _lot_ of
people treat the very idea of nuclear power as something that is "always bad".

This, and the usual political stupidity, has kept nuclear power restricted to
the same designs for decades. Imagine if the computer industry was was never
able to move past the relay and vacuum tube designs made in the WW2 era; today
we might have _very good_ vacuum tubes instead of the integrated circuit.
Newer reactors like the Westinghouse AP1000 are a nice improvement in safety
and cost, but it's still basically the same solid uranium alloy fueled,
pressurized light water reactor we've always used. Newer designs are never
always considered "too risky" in either money _or_ physics.

~~~
ifdefdebug
I'd be interested in hearing which "newer designs" exactly you think got
postponed for stupid political reasons. As far as I know, nuclear power did
evolve over the last decades as far as it could and if it's "still basically
the same", then just nobody came up with something really new in the field.
Basically, uranium alloy fueled, pressurized light water reactor is what you
can get. Fusion? Was said to be ready in 20 years - 40 years ago, and today?
Still 20 years to go...

~~~
jessriedel
> As far as I know, nuclear power did evolve over the last decades as far as
> it could and if it's "still basically the same", then just nobody came up
> with something really new in the field.

The nation that should have been the primary driver of nuclear technologies
(the US) saw an explosion in the cost of development. This was not seen in
other countries, which is evidence that it's because of cultural/institutional
problems rather than fundamental technical ones.

[http://www.vox.com/2016/2/29/11132930/nuclear-power-costs-
us...](http://www.vox.com/2016/2/29/11132930/nuclear-power-costs-us-france-
korea)

> Fusion? Was said to be ready in 20 years - 40 years ago, and today? Still 20
> years to go...

This is a common misconception. In fact, the authoratative government body on
energy research made it very clear 40 years ago what it would cost to develop
fusion power. Fusion power never got the required funding so it never
materialized -- as predicted.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8311566](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8311566)

~~~
crdoconnor
>Nuclear construction costs in the US did spiral out of control, especially
after the Three Mile Island meltdown in 1979. But this wasn't universal.
Countries like ... Japan kept costs fairly stable during this period

So if we keep costs down like Japan did we can experience the same cost
savings they did?

Where do I sign up?

~~~
vidarh
Compared to the radiation deaths caused by coal power plants, Fukushima was a
little inconsequential blip, so _even if_ we assume that it represented what
you get if you follow Japanese regulations, it'd still be a plus.

~~~
crdoconnor
Except we're easily at a point now where _both_ coal and nuclear plants can be
phased out as they reach the end of their natural lives and replaced with
solar + wind farms at a reasonable cost, as Germany and Denmark are currently
demonstrating.

The variability problem turned out to be smaller than nuclear+coal industry
led us to believe and relatively easily managed with market based solutions
(e.g. ramping up/down power usage by aluminum smelters and simply building in
extra capacity) rather than by building massive batteries (an idiotic idea).

~~~
donttrustatoms
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.

------
jkot
People want reactor which passes safety regulations and this article does not
even touches the subject.

Communist Czechoslovakia was working on something like that, civil reactor for
small remote villages. They got stuck on cooling.

BTW there is atomic reactor in center of Prague ;-)

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MikeNomad
The article content does not match the title. Lots of talk about how the guy
grew up, what shaped his outlook, etc. I saw nothing about how he is building
a "small, waste- and carbon-negative reactor."

Is it even possible to build a reactor that meets those criteria, let alone be
financially viable?

~~~
sideshowb
I presume waste-negative means it can take existing waste as fuel, and make it
less dangerous while making energy still (as current fast breeder reactors
can, though not on a small scale afaik). Carbon negative presumably just means
"uses less carbon per kwh over the whole lifecycle than the diesel generator
it replaces" which shouldn't be too hard to achieve.

"Small" presumably makes this harder.

You're right though, some more technical details would be nice.

~~~
julie1
When nuclear was developed, it was foreseen the waste of the first generation
could still be reused by a "next generation" reactor and maybe turned into non
radioactive matter. Nuclear reaction and transmutation says that the most
stable atomic number is around 49 so with N>100 for actual nuclear wastes
there is still potential energy usable.

Then oil went cheap investments were frozen.

As everybody noticed the "most advanced" deployed IIIrd generation of nuclear
reactor are not really a success (EPR).

And the 5th?/4th supposed to come generation is promising a lot, but still has
not delivered a lot. We are lagging way behind schedules, notably because
cheap oil has been a curse.

Oil is getting more and more costly to extract.

PV and wind turbine activity do not follow our 9am/7pm seasonal activity.
Eolian is so massively subsidized in USA Texas had negative prices this summer
on their grid.

So _cheap and convenient (non subsidized)_ energy seems to be our past. Not
the future we will live in.

I guess some activity will slowly disappear ... And that the part of energy in
Internet's price will have to be paid more fairly among users.

Cheap energy is physically soon to be dead. The watt consumed per software use
will matter as soon as government will stop subsidizing the market with public
money. And Artificial Intelligence may not beat human intelligence and
adaptive workforce when costs are fully supported by the software makers.

Human have more value than what google and uber thinks, and their
technological dystopia based on _clean_ non human work force and cheap energy
is a nightmare for both the workers and the ecosystem.

IT industry is not sustainable in its actual trend to not care about
efficiency. Agile is a symptom of it, and we need government to stop their
politic to deregulate on one hand so that those who waste energy don't pay
their bills and on the other hand subsidize the market in favor of those
producing so called cheap energy (fracking, PV, eolian, batteries) that are
polluting.

Sorry, but sails, men, mechanical windmill and horses are some of the
trivially cheap energies that will be available in the future.

------
pvorb
It's 2016 and we still don't have a ultimate disposal place for nuclear waste.
No one knows how much the whole process will cost in the end. At least in
Germany law says whoever produces nuclear waste has to ensure it will be
stored securely. I don't see how this is possible with a startup. Startups
usually take high risk in most of their decisions. Most startups fail within
few years. Who will be responsible for the waste produced by a startup that
goes bankrupt?

There's no other solution than to stop nuclear power now and investing all we
can to care about reliably storing the waste forever (in human terms). And
even if there were ways to store something reliably for 1,000,000 years, it's
impossible to keep future civilizations from opening what shouldn't be. The
pyramids weren't meant to be opened either. ;)

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cmancini
I've met Jake and he gives one of the most inspiring and pragmatic pitches
about the future of energy I've ever heard. What they're building sounds like
magic--massive amounts of energy with incredible safety and portability. Super
exciting stuff.

------
nickpsecurity
Let's certainly not let the risks or difficulties of operating nuclear
reactors or disposing of their waste get in the way of nuclear startups.
Fortunately, those from the West Coast only look at the upside of these things
per DeWitte. An attitude that existed during the Manhattan Project and some
reactors with serious issues. I can't wait to see what comes of this.

Even the author of Learned Optimism that brought us Cognitive Therapy pointed
out that pessimism made sense when we're talking risk management. The context
here is nuclear materials. I have a hard time being optimistic given what past
60+ years have shown us about that.

~~~
jfoutz
Nuclear was the first kind of energy production without externalized costs
(mostly). Solar seems pretty good, but i think the manufacturing is pretty
toxic. I guess the same could be said of the concrete in nuclear reactors.

having a plan for dealing with waste and paying for that plan from the start
is pretty cool. Even if the plan sucks, it's way way better than our plans for
coal and oil. Which, as far as i can tell, is to just not worry about it.

 _edit_

I guess there's no _good_ plan, but it's not like the reactor operators wake
up one Tuesday and wonder where their waste went. Unlike me when i drive.
Carbon is much more dump it in the air and hope for the best. Nuclear waste
is, as far as i know, logged, tracked, audited and generally completely
accounted for.

~~~
nickpsecurity
Are these things you're comparing nuclear to guaranteed to be a problem for
thousands of years? Or are they just chemicals that we might recombine or
destroy in various ways? I'm pretty sure they're the latter. I'm not aware of
anything that turns radioactive waste into non-radioactive waste.

Far as toxic waste, we could always build more of these maybe:

[http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/energy/plasma...](http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/energy/plasma-
converter.htm)

Even that article mentions a specific type of waste as an exception that can
cause fire or explosions in the equipment. Even mighty plasma has trouble with
it. What hope is there for other methods? ;)

~~~
pdkl95
> I'm not aware of anything that turns radioactive waste into non-radioactive
> waste.

You use a breeder reactor. Some of the designs for thorium breeders, for
example, can be used to process existing waste from other reactors.

> guaranteed to be a problem for thousands of years?

Note that it gets safer over time as it decays, and in general the radiation
danger of an isotope goes down the longer the half-life. Once you get into the
particularly long lived isotopes, the radiation danger becomes very small.
Also, the amount of waste is trivial; nuclear power only makes a millionth the
waste as traditional power, because of the vast difference in usable energy
density.

Even if you consider the waste that stays around for "thousands of years",
that's a short time compared to some types of _chemical_ waste that doesn't
decay. How many Superfund sites already exist?[1] There are quite a few in
Silicon Valley[2].

[1] [http://toxmap-
classic.nlm.nih.gov/toxmap/combo/mapControls.d...](http://toxmap-
classic.nlm.nih.gov/toxmap/combo/mapControls.do)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites_in_Cal...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites_in_California)

~~~
nickpsecurity
"Even if you consider the waste that stays around for "thousands of years",
that's a short time compared to some types of chemical waste that doesn't
decay."

I did mention a plasma converter and the possibility of chemical options
coming up down the line. Not many possibilities like that for nuclear.

~~~
pdkl95
> I did mention a plasma converter and the possibility of chemical options
> coming up down the line.

Yes, you did. You also (correctly) suggest we aren't actually going to solve
all chemical pollutant problems with plasma converters. That's an interesting
tech that should be useful in some areas, but even then chemical pollution is
still a _far_ bigger problem than the nuclear power industry ever will be.

> Not many possibilities like that for nuclear.

I did mention a breeder reactor and that nuclear power converts a
_microscopic_ [1] amount of fuel into waster for the same energy. Not only is
nuclear waste a solved problem, it's utterly ridiculous to compare such
trivial amounts of waste to what other industries produce.

[1] literally micro- as in 1/1,000,000 (because we get much more energy[2]
from U or Th)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Energy_densitie...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Energy_densities_of_common_energy_storage_materials)

~~~
nickpsecurity
So, breeders solve waste problem. Reactors are producing microscopic amounts.
One person's basement worth of space should handle US's waste storage needs.
So, what was the Yucca Mountain proposal for again? I seem to have got the
wrong impression they needed space for tons of hot waste.

~~~
DennisP
We needed Yucca Mountain because:

\- Carter put a moratorium on conventional fuel reprocessing, like France
uses.

\- The Clinton administration shut down the Integral Fast Reactor project.

\- The NRC created a very difficult regulatory environment for anyone
attempting to develop more advanced types of reactors, including the fast
reactors and molten salt reactors that would produce far less waste and
consume most of our existing waste as fuel.

~~~
nickpsecurity
There we go. I appreciate some specifics to look into on top of breeder
reactors.

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exabrial
I think 200 years in the future that's no way we will still be burning
dinosaurs. We really need another nuclear age, one with safety and innovation.

------
blacksmith_tb
It's an exciting project, but having chosen Oklo [1] as their name makes them
extremely difficult to search for (try 'oklo reactor' for example), which is a
little problematic for a startup...

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklo)

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

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9erdelta
Even if people want it will they be able to get it because of regulations?

~~~
pjc50
I don't really want my neighbours to be able to buy an _unregulated_ nuclear
reactor! They need to be sited away from built-up areas, water sources etc
because the contamination from a potential failure is "forever", including
areas rendered uninhabitable.

~~~
9erdelta
In addition to your concern (definitely a good one!), I don't think the
current political climate is such that we'll see progress in nuclear energy
anytime soon.

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basicplus2
how absurd.. I should start a start up for a intragalactic mission to apha
centauri

