Chris - Like China X-Energy hit the ground running with the help of tech transfer from Germany. They hired a substantial portion of the HTGR technical team when South Africa put that project into a long hiatus.
X-Energy may not have much construction experience, but Dow is the licensee and will be the power plant constructor. X-Energy is the technology supplier.
X-Energy received a $1 B addition to its cash war chest. That’s a powerful development tool.
You’re correct in pointing to the importance of the refueling system. It’s an area worth watching.
So 11 billion is an immodest amount of money to develop a new reactor? I get you are doubtful, doubtful, wary. But what are you writing this for? Investor protection? You believe that 13 years is super fast for a reactor development? Much of the reactor can be tested without turning it on. If allowed to turn on, a reactor can be built and destroyed after a year. Then reconstructed. It is a carefull “stewardship” of resources that prevents this, not something inherently dangerous. With enough resources a space-X approach is possible.
Chris, it’s not a category error, says the funeral director guy on the internet. 🤓. Just build one a year and sometimes 2 a year. Make small changes each time. The accumulated experience and testing will make a wonderful reactor. It is very possible to build one a year.
I agree with Chris. If you plant one apple tree per year, you still won’t know if you have good apples until they have matured in 5 years, and by then you’ve already planted 6 trees.
Tucson, respectfully, I think your analogy is off but I will stick with in for a moment. Apples are not planted from seeds because nearly every apple seed is unique and you cannot tell what type of apples you are getting from the seeds for some years. Good apples come from grafting known branches. A good stock tree with a good graft will yield good apples. Notice that Chris uses moral language “immodest” is in contrast to “modest.” Raising funds for an energy company is not a moral issue, unless it’s a scam. But Chris is not saying it’s a scam, but that, in his opinion, it is not possible to create an inexpensive Nuclear Power Plant. We have 70 years of power reactors. We know the materials fairly well. We have decades of specific experience to draw from. Building a single unit should not take very long if x-energy is permitted by regulators to use normal construction techniques. By the word "normal" I mean normal in business not normal in government. Chris just did a great show on the ABWR in Japan - how they used palm pilots to manage the build. In amazing contrast - 30 years later during the AP1000 build they were pushing stacks of PAPER around. Sigh. Also, can X-Energy adapt their design? Can they, like Aalo, adapt to what is possible today and keep adjusting to meet their goals? It's hard to know HOW the whole process will flow together until you start trying to make the actual equipment, dig the actual hole, install the actual wiring. If X-Energy develops in the pattern of Aalo, Space-X, and Relativity Space, they will succeed. About the point that there was a lot of money in space launches but the Electricity market is tight. There was NOT a lot of money in space launches UNTIL the cost of those launches came down dramatically. IF we can get the cost of nuclear down dramatically, there is a LOT of places to use heat and all the various possibilities that come from that heat. If the cost is high, we will be stuck at rare applications. If the cost of the heat is much less than natural gas, oil and coal, we are in a Trillion dollar and growing market! The market will grow! There is no reason in physics, or standard business practice that Nuclear Power is not the cheapest energy possible to humanity. We spent 70 years learning! We are ready, if allowed, if allowed, if allowed, to make energy very inexpensive. 11 Billion? Chump change. I am not a fan of the X-Energy design, but the point is if they are permitted to keep making adjustments month by month, year by year, they can refine or change the design to make it cheap.
Because what I get here consistently is professional grade demoralization.
“The labour scarcity, the supply chain atrophy, and the absence of a standing nuclear construction workforce are structural features of the American sector, “
>> And we should heed the people who did that, Boomer?
Perhaps lay down and die , which is your object here it seems?
However TBF what do you suggest author should be done?
Oh no, someone is trying to build something other than a GW scale water based reactor!
I get being reticent about market frothiness and realistic price per kWh, but the idea that we know everything already because someone did something in 1972 and nothing can be improved is getting really goddamned tiring.
Chris - Like China X-Energy hit the ground running with the help of tech transfer from Germany. They hired a substantial portion of the HTGR technical team when South Africa put that project into a long hiatus.
X-Energy may not have much construction experience, but Dow is the licensee and will be the power plant constructor. X-Energy is the technology supplier.
X-Energy received a $1 B addition to its cash war chest. That’s a powerful development tool.
You’re correct in pointing to the importance of the refueling system. It’s an area worth watching.
Yeah it was quite interesting to see the level of technical personnel overlap between PBMR, Ltd. and X-Energy.
So 11 billion is an immodest amount of money to develop a new reactor? I get you are doubtful, doubtful, wary. But what are you writing this for? Investor protection? You believe that 13 years is super fast for a reactor development? Much of the reactor can be tested without turning it on. If allowed to turn on, a reactor can be built and destroyed after a year. Then reconstructed. It is a carefull “stewardship” of resources that prevents this, not something inherently dangerous. With enough resources a space-X approach is possible.
This is a great deep dive on the category error of “Space X-ing” nuclear. https://whatisnuclear.com/news/2025-02-25-a-nuclear-startup-will-probably-not-be-the-next-spacex.html
His method is professional grade demoralization and has yet to propose an alternative.
His goals are obscure but not benevolent one may surmise.
Chris, it’s not a category error, says the funeral director guy on the internet. 🤓. Just build one a year and sometimes 2 a year. Make small changes each time. The accumulated experience and testing will make a wonderful reactor. It is very possible to build one a year.
I agree with Chris. If you plant one apple tree per year, you still won’t know if you have good apples until they have matured in 5 years, and by then you’ve already planted 6 trees.
Tucson, respectfully, I think your analogy is off but I will stick with in for a moment. Apples are not planted from seeds because nearly every apple seed is unique and you cannot tell what type of apples you are getting from the seeds for some years. Good apples come from grafting known branches. A good stock tree with a good graft will yield good apples. Notice that Chris uses moral language “immodest” is in contrast to “modest.” Raising funds for an energy company is not a moral issue, unless it’s a scam. But Chris is not saying it’s a scam, but that, in his opinion, it is not possible to create an inexpensive Nuclear Power Plant. We have 70 years of power reactors. We know the materials fairly well. We have decades of specific experience to draw from. Building a single unit should not take very long if x-energy is permitted by regulators to use normal construction techniques. By the word "normal" I mean normal in business not normal in government. Chris just did a great show on the ABWR in Japan - how they used palm pilots to manage the build. In amazing contrast - 30 years later during the AP1000 build they were pushing stacks of PAPER around. Sigh. Also, can X-Energy adapt their design? Can they, like Aalo, adapt to what is possible today and keep adjusting to meet their goals? It's hard to know HOW the whole process will flow together until you start trying to make the actual equipment, dig the actual hole, install the actual wiring. If X-Energy develops in the pattern of Aalo, Space-X, and Relativity Space, they will succeed. About the point that there was a lot of money in space launches but the Electricity market is tight. There was NOT a lot of money in space launches UNTIL the cost of those launches came down dramatically. IF we can get the cost of nuclear down dramatically, there is a LOT of places to use heat and all the various possibilities that come from that heat. If the cost is high, we will be stuck at rare applications. If the cost of the heat is much less than natural gas, oil and coal, we are in a Trillion dollar and growing market! The market will grow! There is no reason in physics, or standard business practice that Nuclear Power is not the cheapest energy possible to humanity. We spent 70 years learning! We are ready, if allowed, if allowed, if allowed, to make energy very inexpensive. 11 Billion? Chump change. I am not a fan of the X-Energy design, but the point is if they are permitted to keep making adjustments month by month, year by year, they can refine or change the design to make it cheap.
What should they do?
Nothing?
Because what I get here consistently is professional grade demoralization.
“The labour scarcity, the supply chain atrophy, and the absence of a standing nuclear construction workforce are structural features of the American sector, “
>> And we should heed the people who did that, Boomer?
Perhaps lay down and die , which is your object here it seems?
However TBF what do you suggest author should be done?
I think that TRISO will not be the biggest technical hurdle, good luck containing the helium pressurized to about 6 MPa (about 60 atmospheres).
https://info.ornl.gov/sites/publications/Files/Pub196359.pdf
Titans of Nuclear had an episode about helium cooled reactors.
Nuclear Technology Series: High Temperature Gas Reactors
https://www.lastenergy.com/titansofnuclear/miniseries
Oh no, someone is trying to build something other than a GW scale water based reactor!
I get being reticent about market frothiness and realistic price per kWh, but the idea that we know everything already because someone did something in 1972 and nothing can be improved is getting really goddamned tiring.