Radiant CEO Doug Bernauer envisions a future where portable nuclear generators can be quickly sited to provide power after a natural disaster.
Radiant IndustriesBacked by Andreessen Horowitz and Founders Fund, Radiant Industries says its megawatt nuclear power generators are cleaner and safer compared to the diesel alternatives that dominate the market for remote and backup power generation.
Thanks to wildfires, hurricanes and other natural disasters, the past few years have seen an uptick in the use of diesel generators for backup power when the grid goes down. In California alone, the number of such generators shot up 34% between 2018 and 2020, according to policy analyst firm M.Cubed. That power can be vital in emergency situations to operate medical and other needed equipment. But it comes with a huge cost to human health.
“If you operate a one megawatt diesel generator, you are committing to statistically increased cancer rates,” says Doug Bernauer, CEO of Radiant Industries.
He’s not wrong. In 2012, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, an arm of the World Health Organization, concluded that diesel exhaust definitely causes cancer, based on decades of research and study. These risks get compounded around the world, where diesel generators aren’t just used for emergencies but for everyday power supply. According to the International Finance Organization, there are regions in Africa where “backup” diesel generators are responsible for up to 40% of daily power generation.
That’s where Bernauer’s company comes in. Its goal is to build portable nuclear generators capable of producing a megawatt of power (potentially enough to power about 1,000 homes) that can be packed into a shipping container and moved around to where it’s needed without any of the harmful pollution or costs associated with diesel.
“I think the way people think about nuclear is changing now,” Bernauer, 41, says. “In the past five to 10 years, there's been a vision of a new future where nuclear plays a role.”
On Monday, Radiant announced that it has raised a $40 million series B round led by Andreessen Horowitz to bring about that future, bringing its total capital raised to $55 million. The investment is geared towards accelerating development of the company’s nuclear power technology, with a goal of getting to commercial production in 2028.
“In recent years, wars, pandemics, ransomware attacks, and extreme weather events have pushed supply chains, power grids and people to the brink — creating a real inflection point for industries that haven’t had reason to change historically,” Andreessen Horowitz General Partner David Ulevitch, who has joined Radiant’s Board of Directors, told Forbes in a statement. “Radiant is bringing the innovation mentality and engineering rigor that they honed in aerospace to nuclear, another industry in dire need of renewed ingenuity and innovation.”
Conceptual art of 5 Radiant reactors at a single site.
Radiant IndustriesBuilding A Nuclear Power Plant In A Box
At the heart of Radiant’s generators, which it calls Kaleidos, is a nuclear fuel called TRISO particles. Each of these small particles (which are about the size of a poppy seed) is comprised of uranium, oxygen and carbon covered by ceramic and carbon materials. The particles are then formulated into larger cylinders or spheres (depending on the reactor design) for use in reactors.
One major advantage of TRISO particles is that they have a very high melting point, making reactors based on the fuel theoretically meltdown-proof. Tests of the materials have taken the particles up to temperatures of over 3000 degrees Fahrenheit, with almost no damage. (To give you an idea of how hot that is, napalm creates temperatures of about 2000 degrees.) That’s well beyond the temperatures most nuclear reactors will ever get.
When it comes to the safety of Kaleidos and other similar microreactor concepts, Todd Allen, the chair of nuclear engineering at the University of Michigan, tells Forbes that the risk is on par with that of reactors at dozens of college campuses around the country that are used for nuclear research. “There’s a lot less radioactive material there, the systems are a lot less complex and they’re harder to fail,” he says. “There’s a long list of reasons why these plants are a lot safer than the traditional big light water reactor,” he says. “And the safety records of those are pretty good.”
April Novak, a nuclear engineer at the Argonne National Laboratory who has been working with Radiant on the development of its reactors, notes that there are several aspects of Kaleidos’ design that makes it unique among other microreactor concepts being developed. First is that its small and portable design makes it ideal for a number of applications, ranging from providing backup power during emergencies to being set along the highways to provide power to electric vehicle charging.
She also says the company’s aiming towards a passive heat removal system using helium as a coolant, which significantly reduces the chances of an accident and also means that even if the reactor is suddenly shut down, the heat dissipation would prevent a chance at meltdown. In 2024, the company will be conducting its first tests of this design (using electric heaters at first) to make sure it works as planned in the real world. “All of those different aspects give the Radiant design a unique position in the advanced reactor space,” she says.
“I think we’re going to see a huge shift in this where people realize that if they care about the environment, they have to care about nuclear.”
From Rockets To Reactors
Bernauer didn’t set out to become a nuclear engineer. In 2007, he joined SpaceX as an avionics engineer before the company had successfully launched its first rocket. At SpaceX, Bernauer became part of the team that developed its Grasshopper prototype – a rocket that could launch and land whose systems became integrated into the company’s Falcon 9 rocket, which now routinely launches and lands so the rocket can be reused.
Radiant CEO Doug Bernauer
Radiant IndustriesAfter successfully finishing the Grasshopper, Bernauer says, “I started to then do all the weird Elon side projects” that included things like Hyperloop and the work that led to the Boring Company. Another project was figuring out how to make fuel on Mars so that the company’s Starship rockets could be refueled and sent back to Earth. Powering that fuel production, Bernauer says, would take about “three football fields” worth of solar panels. The impracticality of that led him to look into the possibilities of nuclear power instead, which solved a lot of the problems raised by using solar power for this purpose.
Then in 2019, the Department of Defense issued a call from industry for small, portable microreactors the size of shipping containers that could be used by the military. For Bernauer, this seemed like a great opportunity to prove out the small nuclear reactor concept he was working on for potential use on Mars, because the military as a customer would mean more stability in terms of potential revenue and regulatory pathways. So he left SpaceX to found Radiant that same year. Since then, the company has been focused on developing its technology and begun working with the Idaho National Laboratory and the Argonne National Laboratory under a federal program that enables industry to take advantage of research and expertise being developed by national laboratories.
For Scott Nolan, a partner at Founders Fund, which has invested in Radiant, this work with the National Labs is key to proving to potential customers–and the general public–that the company’s reactors can be built safely and efficiently. Once the company has proven that and is approved by regulators, he says, “I think we’re going to see a huge shift in this where people realize that if they care about the environment, they have to care about nuclear.”
Once Radiant’s designs have been proven out in engineering testing and approved by regulators, the company believes that it has a strong market potential. Today, the diesel generator market for the United States alone is over $5.8 billion, according to analyst IBISWorld. Bernauer believes that his company’s reactors–which only have to be refueled every five years or so–will be attractive to remote communities that are located far from an electric grid and may have an unreliable supply chain to refuel diesel.
But for now, Radiant’s CEO is simply focused on taking the money his company has raised to meet its ambitious goal of having one of the first novel nuclear reactors approved and out on the commercial market since the industry’s heyday in the 1970s. He also aims to change attitudes in the business sector about nuclear, an industry that’s notorious for delayed, over-budget projects. “In a world where you can just get a reactor designed and built on time and on budget, everything can change,” Bernauer says.
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