Atomic Insights

Atomic energy technology, politics, and perceptions from a nuclear energy insider who served as a US nuclear submarine engineer officer

Advanced Atomic Technologies

Atomic Show #277 – Simon Wakter, pro-nuclear engineer in an ambivalent country

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Simon Wakter is a strongly pro-nuclear engineer in a country that passed a referendum officially phasing out nuclear energy since several years before he was born. He has to round up to be called a thirty-something.

Simon works in the nuclear energy branch of AFRY, a well-established 17,000 employee, all-of-the-above. engineering company that recently adopted a new brand name.

During this show we talked about his research and professional work investigating new markets for smaller nuclear power systems, his interest in risk management and analysis, his participation as an active member of the young generations group of the European Nuclear Society, and his work as the editor of a newsletter that covers nuclear energy from a Nordic perspective.

We talked about the complicated political history of nuclear energy developments in Sweden, delved into the sources of antinuclear activities, and chatted about recent improvements in nuclear energy acceptability as a powerful tool to address climate change and energy poverty.

Simon is young man who appreciates the importance of abundant clean energy in helping humans to develop their full potential. He is enthusiastic about technological advances that are revisiting some aging and possibly obsolete assumptions about the limitations of nuclear energy’s contributions.

I enjoyed this conversation and hope you do as well.

Please provide your comments and suggestions.

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Atomic Show #276 – HolosGen Claudio Filippone and Chip Martin

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HolosGen has attacked the nuclear power plant cost and schedule challenge from the opposite direction chosen by many nuclear reactor developers. Claiming to be agnostic about the reactor specifics – as long as it produces reliable heat in a small-enough configuration – HolosGen founder Claudio Filippone decided to focus on radical improvements to the “balance of plant.”

Filippone worked for a decade as a consultant specializing in power production systems. He is both a nuclear engineer and an electrical engineer with the skills required to address a wide variety of systems and challenges. His advice was valued and sought after, allowing him to accumulate both ideas and resources.

He began the groundwork for HolosGen in 2008 and incorporated the company in 2017.

During his time as a consultant, he recognized that “the balance of plant” outside of the nuclear portions of a power plant represented 70-80% of the initial capital cost and a similar portion of the ongoing operations and maintenance costs. That was his inspiration for choosing to focus on radically improving that section of the system.

As the submarine sound silencing saying goes, “attack the big noise first.”

The fundamental choice enabling dramatic improvement was to abandon the Rankine (steam) cycle and switch to the Brayton (gas turbine) cycle.

He worked with visionaries inside the US Army’s technical branches to gather requirements for mobile generators that could safely and reliably operate under extreme conditions. The challenging requirements included resistance to focused kinetic attacks.

By choosing to meet performance requirements provided by one of the toughest customers available, Filippone and his HolosGen team have produced a design concept that can be manufactured and delivered to almost any customer in any location.

HolosGen quad in a box.
Copyright HolosGen. Used with permission

The integrated power production system can fit inside of an ISO standard 40 foot long container. It will come in a number of different sizes depending on customer needs. One version will have a designed power capacity of 10 MWe.

Filippone credits the ARPA-E Meinter program for helping HoloGen to achieve rapid progress in a radically new direction.

He has hired a team of creative, aggressive, dedicated engineers, machinists and technicians – mostly fresh out of school or the military – and carefully trained them with a program that includes a healthy dose of hands-on work with functional components.

He has inspired them with a vision and a mission to fundamentally change the way that nuclear energy can be put to useful work for society.

The machines that he and his team have produced – and they have produced several functional prototypes – are modern, closed Brayton Cycle heat engines that use high-speed compressors and expanders that are coupled electrically, not mechanically.

That configuration enables modern control systems to finely balance the compressor output with the turbine input, maximizing thermal efficiency over a wide range of power outputs.

They will work with a variety of gases, including helium, nitrogen and supercritical CO2.

Filippone has engaged the advisory services of Charles (Chip) Martin, a deeply experienced and well-connected nuclear professional. Immediately prior to joining HoloGen, Chip was the Glenn T. Seaborg Science and Engineering Policy Fellow for the American Nuclear Society.

Dr. Filippone and Chip Martin joined me for a fascinating and detailed conversation about their integrated nuclear power system in a box.

The show is a bit longer than normal, but I think you will find listening to it will be a valuable investment of your time.

As always, comments are welcome.

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Atomic Show #275 – Managing advanced nuclear development during pandemic

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Managing any business is hard work, especially during a global pandemic with stay-at-home orders in place. It requires creativity and flexibility along with some amount of prior preparation. On May 11, 2020, I gathered a group of representatives from several start-up companies that are developing advanced nuclear technologies to talk about how they are making […]

Atomic Show #274 – Thomas Jam Pedersen, Copenhagen Atomics

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Copenhagen isn’t the first city name that comes to mind as the place to start a nuclear company. Denmark has decommissioned its last research reactor and has never had a nuclear power plant. That hasn’t deterred Thomas Jam Pedersen and his colleagues at Copenhagen Atomics. Starting a decade or more ago, they began learning about […]

Atomic Show #273 – Liz Muller, Deep Isolation

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Liz Muller is a co-founder and the CEO of Deep Isolation, a company that makes the modest claim of having invented a solution to nuclear waste. The politically unsolved waste issue has plagued nuclear energy development since the mid 1970s. That was when it became abundantly clear that the original plan to recycle used fuel […]

Atomic Show #270 – Fastest Path to Zero

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Suzanne (Suzy) Hobbs Baker serves as the Creative Director for Fastest Path to Zero. I recently spoke with Suzy and Steve Aplin, a consultant to the Canadian nuclear industry and frequent Atomic Show guest, about the work that Fastest Path to Zero has done and plans to do in the near future. Fastest Path to […]

Oklo has filed first combined license application (COLA) with the NRC since 2009

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Oklo, Inc. announced yesterday that its combined license application (COLA) to build and operate an Aurora at INL was undergoing acceptance review at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Key project specifics Oklo’s Aurora is a 1.5 MWe liquid metal fast reactor with heat pipes to move fission heat out of the reactor core and into the […]

Investing in atomic fission to make world a better place

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An increasing number of major corporations and famous individual investors have announced plans to make their money work harder to address environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals. These plans are not about philanthropic giving. The individuals and organizations believe that careful targeting of their money can produce both financial and social returns. By investing in […]

Project Pele – Part II. Enabling technologies

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Building mobile nuclear power plants will be a challenge, but successfully meeting the challenges could alter the future trajectory of the energy and fuels supply industry. That is one of the largest and most consequential sectors of our modern, mobile, industrialized economy. There are no guarantees, but compared to many research and development projects, Project […]

Project Dilithium – Boldly going back to a place our ancestors visited and prematurely abandoned

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In January 2019, the Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO) of the U.S. Department of Defense officially informed the world that it was interested in learning more about small, mobile, nuclear generators. The SCO said it wanted to find out if there was technology available that could supply a forward operating base with abundant, emission-free electricity for […]

Are we finally approaching lift-off for a real Renaissance?

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Obituaries of the “Nuclear Renaissance” have been widespread and frequent in the years since the Great Recession and reactions to the Great Northeast Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami. I’m pretty sure those obits have been premature in declaring the subject to be dead. Last week, I attended the 6th Annual Advanced Reactor Summit and Technology Showcase. […]

Atomic Show #264 – Building momentum in advanced nuclear energy

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It’s not glaringly obvious, but preparatory steps enabling a take off for advanced nuclear power systems are making measurable progress. Enabling legislative acts have been passed by both the Senate and House and signed by the President, turning them into laws requiring actions. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is back to full strength and under a […]