Nuclear Power - An Emerging Technology

I never met Hyman Rickover.? He died before I interviewed to become a Nuclear Engineering Officer with Admiral McKee.? A strong value that I learned in “Rickover’s Navy” and that I leverage in my Emerging Technology Advisory today is the need and willingness to learn a technology to a deep level in order to properly position business related to that technology.

As a nuclear propulsion plant watch officer, your two main tools were your voice to direct operations, and a pen to sign off on procedures.? But, as a Nuke, you were required to train on all the tasks that you may direct or sign off on.? For instance, you did not have to be good at it, but you needed to actually turn all the valves and execute all the procedures yourself to start a ship's service turbine generator at least once.? The excerpt from this article describes Rickover’s philosophy:

“Rickover believed that to manage a high risk enterprise you have to fundamentally understand the technical aspects of the job. This was NOT an overview of how things worked. It was a detailed understanding of the science, chemistry, physics, and engineering behind the processes. The requirement for technical knowledge didn’t stop with the operations manager or plant manager. The technical knowledge requirement went all the way up to the CEO/President level. The higher on the org chart you were – the better your technical knowledge was supposed to be. Rickover said: ‘At Naval Reactors, I take individuals who are good engineers and make them into managers. they do not manage by gimmicks but rather by knowledge, logic, common sense, and hard work’.”

Nuclear Power has gone in and out of favor (mostly out).? But, per the above, I am biased in favor of it and with climate change, the fact that nuclear power does not emit greenhouse gasses makes it attractive.? And the hopes of Nuclear Fusion (combining atoms to generate energy) vs existing Nuclear Fission (splitting atoms to generate energy but also generate nuclear waste) has garnered a lot of attention.? The recent signing of the Inflation Reduction Act included budget for nuclear energy investment.

But, private investment is committed as well.? As this article from crunchbase shows, Venture Investors Put Billions Into Nuclear Fusion And Fission Projects.??

So, what is “the gouge” on these emerging technologies?? Nuclear Fission has been proven and Nuclear Fusion has not been proven.? The emerging tech around Nuclear Fission centers around safer and less expensive methods for generating power than the pressurized water reactors that I worked on.? Terrapower’s sodium cooled reactor technology is an example of this.??

Nuclear Fusion is what the sun uses to generate energy.? It used to be thought that to achieve power from Nuclear Fusion, you had to achieve the pressure and temperature generated by the sun, so it was impractical.? Now, however, innovation and slightly different approaches to what the sun uses is making power from Nuclear fusion feasible.? What has yet to be done is to produce more power from a fusion reactor than the power needed to be put in, i.e. to achieve the high temperatures, etc.? Obviously net power generation is required for the use of any power supply. This youtube video does an excellent job of describing the overall approach and challenges of accomplishing net power generation from nuclear fusion.

The main issue seems to be the Deuterium and Tritium needed for the fusion reaction.? The sun uses regular old hydrogen for nuclear fusion, but to achieve fusion at lower temperatures, you need variants (called isotopes) of hydrogen.? Deuterium is a hydrogen variant that is plentiful and occurs naturally in sea water.? But, not so for Tritium.? The fusion reactor needs to self produce that Tritium after an initial seed of Tritium that the reactor would get from a fission reactor.? Also, Tritium is potentially unsafe.? Daniel Jassby is a critic of fusion technology’s usefulness and describes the Tritium problem here.? This? “Out of Gas, A shortage of tritium fuel may leave fusion energy with an empty tank” article does the same.? Commonwealth Fusion Systems and their investors disagree.? Iter is a fusion initiative in France and they disagree as well.??

My gut feeling is that this is a “moonshot”.? And with enough funding, we humans tend to overcome the challenges associated with the technology needed to accomplish the moonshot.? The question becomes how long will it take to accomplish and will the net new power generation achieved be worth the investment.? But, the potential upside (abundant power generation without greenhouse gasses and minimal negative side effects) is worth the investment regardless.

What do you think?

Mark

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