NANO offers safe, cheap nuclear power, anywhere, anytime

“Primarily, we’re only a submarine above floor,” mentioned Chairman and Founding father of NANO Nuclear Power Inc., Jay Jiang Yu.

However this explicit sub, if you’ll, has wheels. And it may go wherever a semi-truck can go, sporting a high-tech micro reactor on its again… offering smaller, cheaper and safer nuclear vitality for the longer term, wherever it’s wanted.

For these out of the loop, nuclear energy is again, in a giant approach.

The truth is, this previous weekend on the Golden Globes, Oppenheimer, the movie which paperwork the daddy of the atomic bomb, earned 5 awards, together with the highest prize.

You may even name it a “new nuclear renaissance,” says Yu, including that on the COP28 summit in Dubai, 22 international locations signed an settlement to triple nuclear energy by 2050. It included influential US local weather envoy John Kerry.

“The thought for the micro reactor really began as a result of we might see that there was going to be larger vitality points sooner or later,” mentioned NANO CEO and Head of Reactor Growth, James Walker.

“So we began inspecting the entire nuclear seed, or the entire vitality seed, and we settled on nuclear as a result of nuclear was probably the most constant type of vitality. It was zero carbon, it could possibly be put wherever.”

“It wasn’t locationally dependent like needing wind or photo voltaic or good situations,” he mentioned.

NANO got here to understand the bigger potential market was in additional transportable 20 megawatt reactors that might deploy quicker and be mass manufactured with decrease capital prices — that pushed them within the route of a micro reactor.

A micro reactor is outlined as something beneath 20 megawatts energy. And it has huge advantages over the larger modular reactors which can be at the moment being developed by different corporations, reminiscent of X-energy and TerraPower.

What can it energy?

Says Walker, “you’re speaking about distant mining websites, distant oil and fuel, distant industrial initiatives, distant habitation, catastrophe reduction areas, navy bases, island communities that run on diesel.”

“All of those areas are at the moment operating on diesel, and so they can’t be substituted for anything, which implies that the potential of growing one thing that could possibly be deployed simply, inexpensively, that might run for a very long time and exchange diesel has an infinite potential market.”

“We have designed it round an ISO container for the apparent causes that we are able to then use current transportation infrastructure like standard trucking or delivery or trains and we are able to get this factor wherever on this planet extremely shortly.”

Just like a tub form, it has fewer working elements, wants rather a lot much less nuclear materials, and much fewer individuals to put in, supervise and function — a possible world-changing vitality system that might have a huge effect internationally.

Issues reminiscent of a desalination plant in a distant location, for instance, or smaller communities the Northwest Territories or northern Alberta, BC, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, says Walker.

“It is received a whole bunch of those places the place there is a thousand individuals, 2,000 individuals. And people locations all run on diesel at the moment and it’s totally costly. However a micro reactor might insert into these locations the place there are a pair thousand individuals right here, a thousand individuals there, and so they run for 15 to twenty years.”

Curiously, there is no such thing as a cash up-front, no capital prices, customers simply signal an influence lease and NANO takes care of the remainder. Straightforward peasy.

“We noticed a research that one in all these distant places in Canada, a metropolis of 800 individuals, it prices $10 million in simply uncooked gas prices a yr to energy it. And in the end, a micro reactor can are available and energy it for 20 years, which might be a $200 million uncooked price, not even together with logistical prices and exchange all of that at a approach much less price.”

“We are going to ship the crops up there after which we are going to recoup our prices over the contracted time,” Walker added.

So, what in regards to the dangers, I ask. Do we’d like a cordon of particular forces safety round it? I imply, it’s nuclear, proper? What if it will get hit by an RPG or a missile of some type?

Can we now have a nasty, huge Chernobyl drawback on our fingers?

No, says Walker: “Individuals have requested this query earlier than, however I believe there undoubtedly must be some stage of higher schooling with nuclear, as a result of to start with, nuclear reactors cannot explode. That is not how they work.”

“They are not enriched to a stage the place they explode … all you are doing is separating materials, so it simply sits there inert.”

“And that is the issue when individuals discuss soiled bombs with none information of what they’re speaking about, as a result of it really explodes a bit of nuclear materials,” Walker mentioned.

“In case you take a look at deaths per gigawatt hour, nuclear beats wind and photo voltaic, however it’s nonetheless received a repute and it is received that repute as a result of radiation is a hazard that’s much less instinctively understood.”

Quite the opposite, the longer term seems to be vivid for corporations reminiscent of NANO, who’re searching for to develop into vertically built-in.

The agency is stepping into the gas aspect, the transportation aspect and so forth.

“We’re wanting on the subsequent way forward for the following era of nuclear. If the previous nuclear is out, we’re the brand new nuclear,” says Yu, of the so-called nuclear renaissance.

“NANO has two technical groups, one drawn principally from College of Cambridge professors engaged on one aspect and the opposite that’s predominantly professors and docs from the UC Berkeley,” mentioned Walker..

“So there’s two scientific groups individually growing two ideas for us.”

NANO Nuclear’s merchandise in technical improvement are ‘ZEUS’ a strong core battery reactor and ‘ODIN’ a low-pressure coolant reactor, every representing superior developments in transportable nuclear micro reactors.

Walker’s skilled engineering expertise contains nuclear reactors, mines, submarines, chemical crops, factories, mine processing amenities, infrastructure, automotive equipment and testing rigs.

Yu beforehand labored as an analyst as a part of the Company & Funding Banking Division at Deutsche Financial institution on Wall Avenue. He’s an energetic philanthropist and the founding father of a non-profit group that gives entry to sports activities and schooling to underprivileged youth in New York Metropolis.