Nanonuclear is vertically integrated microreactor and advanced nuclear technology company that raised $20 million on July 18, 2024 in a stock offering and had raised $8 million in earlier funding. Brian Wang of Nextbigfuture interviewed the CEO James Walker.
Mr. Walker is a Nuclear Physicist and was the project lead and manager for constructing the new Rolls-Royce Nuclear Chemical Plant; he was the UK Subject Matter Expert for the UK Nuclear Material Recovery Capabilities and was the technical project manager for constructing the UK reactor core manufacturing facilities. Mr. Walker was also seconded to Rolls Royce where he modeled configurations of RR’s Zero-Power reactor to inform confidence limits for the UK’s successor submarine’s mechanical design and worked for the Rolls-Royce Nuclear Thermal Hydraulics Engineering team investigating reactor channel thermal performance to inform new reactor designs and support the safety case for reactors in current class submarines. Mr. Walker’s professional engineering experience includes nuclear reactors, mines, submarines, chemical plants, factories, mine processing facilities, infrastructure, automotive machinery, and testing rigs.
They plan to sell 1,000 microreactors on a yearly basis for a trillion-dollar industry. Nuclear currently supplies some 18% of US power needs off 95GW of installed capacity, according to the Energy Information Agency (EIA). The Department of Energy (DoE) forecasts the country will need around 200GW of new nuclear capacity to reach net-zero by 2050.
Their initial reactors will nuclear fission reactors with 1-2 megawatts of power.
ZEUS which is a solid core battery reactor and ODIN, a low-pressure coolant reactor, each representing advanced developments in portable, on-demand capable.
The Zeus nuclear microreactor is engineered for safe operation in remote locations. Its ‘walk-away safe’ feature ensures stability and safety, minimizing risks in varied environments. This aspect is critical for ensuring consistent operation without the need for active intervention.
Portability and Adaptability: The modular components fit within standard shipping containers, facilitating transportation to remote sites. This feature enhances its utility in areas where traditional energy infrastructure is not feasible.
Zeus is tailored for locations where conventional power sources are impractical. Its design and functionality offer a reliable power supply, essential for operations in isolated regions. Zeus core is designed to provide constant power for at least 10 full power years.
The microreactor prototype is designed to harness thermal energy for direct heat applications or to convert it into electric power. This versatility allows for diverse applications, ranging from heating to electricity generation, meeting a wide array of energy needs.
Zeus employs conventional materials and multiple off the shelf components in order to minimize time to market and reduce cost. The prototype ensures the provision of reliable and clean electricity. Its design and operational efficiency make it suitable for commercial use, as well as for non-electric applications such as hydrogen fuel production, a growing area of interest in the renewable energy sector.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
Know what? Certain new nuclear technologies are potentially very “safe and effective”. How do we convince people of that? Well that’s hard. So we look at it two ways (to keep it simple). First, we are still in the fossil fuel age, and that’s killing all of us, by the lifespans we have, slowly but surely. And doing a mean number on our planet. OK, so what do we do? New nuclear fission technology has the potential to give us a lot of power, in a short period of time, in a space small enough that it takes not to build a massive god dam reactor. That’s big. That costs billions. That’s a pain in the ass. So why do that when we can do so much better?
Yes we can. New compact nuclear reactors can be designed so they can’t melt down, no matter how stupid the people running them are. (A melt down is never good, people screaming, running for the nearest fire exits, uhm, not good at all). So we build reactors that can’t melt down, no matter how stupid or inattentive someone is. We can do this now. So lets. Ever hear of a natural gas explosion? It ain’t pretty. Fossil fuels can kill you both slowly, or shockingly quickly. It all depends on the moment. Nuclear power can deal with many of our energy needs. If we do it right. I believe we can.
Ok, then there’s something called “The Calculus of optimizing system scale” …
As a kind-of off topic example, consider those big ol’ ubiquitous countryside spanning electricity major spans. There are variable costs … how big of cable to use, expected 25 year life, how far apart the towers are to be placed, how many insulators, the distance between cables, whether to make ’em multi-cable “air bundled” or not, that kind of thing. The cost of producing electricity, the finance cost for the projects, the costs of transformers to convert to a more efficient voltage, and back down again. Ongoing and expected maintenance costs, the spot price for aluminum, the acceptable losses under even heavy loads, and the maximum allowable sag in high-load and high-ambient temperature, at noon.
All sorts of factors. I probably missed twice as many.
Anyway, all these factors go into a large Monte Carlo statistical analysis and cost-over-ownership evaluation. The cable is chosen, insulators are specified, spacing of towers set, and civil architects handle hillsides, rivers, estuaries, valleys, flatland and wind-loading-factors. They get back to the calculus bunch, with complaints and warnings. The calculus is re-done, the architects re-jigger the plan, certain gotchas remain … back and forth a few more iterations, and the project budget is set, budget-of-money and budget-of-time. 25% or 35% is added for inflation, “gotchas”, regulatory impediments, labor shortages, seasonality issues, land-owners putting up a merry fight over middling land-use variances rights, politicians grease up their jowls and blither meaningless trout-droppings for the press. Native tribes demand qualitatively juicy bribes, environmentalists discover BOTH purple-spotted tree frogs and the thought-to-be-extinct black snake symbiotic relationship with one-eyed Jack owls … delaying things whilst China detects bags of un-used cash, and puts in bottom bids with inadequate substitutes written in Mandarin, which no one on the Stateside team understands the nuances of.
AM I SLIGHTLY PESSIMISTIC about the process? Yah, you betcha. Look at the International Thermal Electric Nuclear Reactor. 3x the original all-in price, and only 70% done. Estimates for a 2036 roll out, when it was supposed to be producing laughingly-low actual electrical output by 2020. Oh well. Purple spotted tree frogs.
I say the same for the unwarranted enthusiasm for somehow producing a small gazillion count of tiny ‘micro’ nuclear fission reactors. It is unrealistic. We — call it “the West” if you like to be fairly accurate — we can NOT even get certification of a plan to install much needed waste incineration facilities fairly close to the cities that vomit megatons of the stuff every year to be shipped by rail (i’m laughing so hard…) to remote and not-visible-from-the-free valleys in relatively dry areas, to dump the crap and cover it up with piles of dirt scraped up beforehand. We need THOUSANDS of incinerators (about the same as this magnificent nuclear micro-reactor dog-turd-of-a-proposal), and yet … no can do. NIMBY — not in my back yard. Purple spotted tree frogs. Klamath Indians. Kickapoo’s in Florida. No incinerators.
EACH and every nuclear reactor, be it a lil’ 25-to-100 megawatt job that could fit on a trio of 18-wheelers, a something the size of the recently decommissioned Indian Point 3, or Palisades, or Grohnde, Gundremmingen C, or Brokdorf nuclear power plants … or Isar 2, Emsland, and Neckarwestheim 2 in Germany, big ol’ multi-gigawatt plants, EACH and every one of them required lengthy design rounds, review rounds, pre-certification rounds, interlocked by an astounding amount of paperwork and whole multi-floor office buildings full of apparatchiks pushing the papers about, holding meetings, press conferences, symposia, farming out requests-for-comments, RF-proposals, RF-funding, RF-logistics.
So somehow doing a 1,000 (oh heck, let’s just say 25?) micro-reactors is going to be fundamentally cost-effective given the RED TAPE involved? Really? REALLY?
I know I’m a big cynical about this … but it isn’t because of the technology. It really is because of the most absurd and yet remarkable phalanx of no-can-do than as been put up by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission(s) around the planet, to prevent and thwart all projects except in the most friendly markets, and with the most hard-nosed contrary administrators in charge. Friendly states/provinces, friendly advocates, friendly universities, and friendly political figures.
AND THAT is my pitch: ain’t happening in 99% of the desirable sites. Or less.
GoatGuy
All these impediments you mention are applicable, but gratuitous considering the back-of-napkin economics of micro reactors. The levelized cost of producing electricity with these things is well over (even double or triple) the retail cost the end-users pay in markets like mine (PJM). That is why they are often pitched for operations in the arctic circle and otherwise ‘off the grid’ (i.e. where nobody presently lives).
500 kg of 20% enriched HALEU would cost >$6.5M: buying 21 tons of natural uranium, converting to fluoride, enriching, and fabricating the fuel… based on extrapolations of calculations I use to procure PWR fuel. That is a 5X increase in specific nuclear fuel cost for the micro reactor relative to the PWR. The fuel economy is likely limited to 1/10 what we see in large reactors due to leakage driven by the large diffusion length of neutrons in anything other than water. OKLO was proposing 1/50th of LWR fuel utilization in the design document (a pulp fiction) that the NRC flat out rejected as a rock they didn’t ask for.
One is not simply allowed to have such material un-guarded 24-7… Arguments regarding “the irradiated material protects itself from theft” are moot. You’re going to have to guard the units, which gets more expensive when you distribute them in whatever ‘Back to the Future’ community. Confronted with the idea that they must be consolidated at a guarded site, the microreactor becomes suited to a limited set of applications (military base, industrial site, moon base).
No matter how autonomous the marketing says the mircro RX is, it will require an operator that gets paid more than the guard. This person would have a license. Maybe, if the present rules were changed, this person could watch more than one unit.
Recall, this material can level cities. The nebulous “They” are not going to let you have one like it is a Tesla. “They”re not going to let your municipality build them like so many water towers.
The idea is just silly on so many levels. Micro reactors are the 1958 Ford Nucleon of our day.
James Walker looks like he is 24 years old. I’d pay attention if he were hawking crypto. Seeing that he’s discussing my field from outside the fence in a British accent, I’ll just get back to my hundred million dollar reload that has to be built this winter. Bravo for his ability to secure $28M in funding – it is a race to see which kugelmass (small k, common noun) we never hear from again.
I have no doubt that Rolls Royce or the larger British community can design and build whatever reactor they want from the smallest gas-cooled to the largest LWR. That said, EDF (French) manages the fuel cycles in the UK fleet. The most recently added unit was a PWR. The proposed future units are PWRs. Every now and again the UK will spin-up the US vendors with teaser interest in building ABWRs in Wales or a handful of PRISM reactors to burn up all the MAGNOX-generated plutonium.
Hi. Why are you not on reddit anymore?
Any comment on Rolls Royce’s (semi-)Small Modular Reactor ? 470 MW PWR isn’t too far away from where the industry started.
John O’Neill
How much does it cost once you include the cost of a militia to guard it?
So, my Bullsnot Meter is wiggling near the red zone. That the CEO dude is an actual nuclear engineer is great! No meter-wiggle on that!
But … do they have ANY working micro-reactors yet?
Wait … how about certification to RUN an experimental reactor
Wait … plan for a micro-reactor that is walk-away safe
Wait … Fuel-and-all-in cost estimates yet?
Building to house it, someplace. Someplace really safe.
That wasn’t even trying hard. How much $/MWh is their happy estimate of delivered power?
Etc.
Just Saying …
Yes.
But it’s fun to dream, isn’t it?
(Maybe we can clone Elon to fund and recruit the talent to make this happen. It might take 15 years instead of 10, but eventually…)
By the way, I love it when you pop in here.