The Future is Radiant

Why we invested in Radiant

The Status Quo

We have just begun to feel the devastation of climate change. Unless global greenhouse emissions fall by 7.6% per year between 2020 and 2030, things will only get worse. Even with the pandemic-induced reduction in traffic, carbon emissions fell by only 6%. We have reached the highest level of carbon emissions ever recorded with 419 parts per million, with an additional ~40 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide predicted to pollute the atmosphere each year.

Solar and wind play their part, but their intermittent nature makes them an incomplete solution. We need carbon-free energy solutions whose power generation can scale with demand rather than being subject to the ever-worsening vicissitudes of nature. It is unequivocal that the fastest way to decarbonize the grid is nuclear power. There are many promising initiatives — government- and venture-funded — to reduce costs while improving the safety of nuclear energy for major metropolitan grids, but micro-grids and remote power are an under-appreciated problem.

Generally speaking, the smaller the grid, the dirtier and pricier the power. Traditional nuclear power plants (NPPs) can take 5–7 years and more than $10 billion to build. At the same time, providing clean power to off-grid locations is inefficient because of high fuel transport costs and slow deployment. For example, in remote Alaskan villages — where diesel generators are the norm — fuel costs can rise to as much as $10 per gallon, with electricity costs exceeding $0.40 per kilowatt-hour (kWh), while air-dropped fuel can cost as much as $400 per gallon [source].

To fully utilize the power of nuclear energy for all-size grids, we need portable microreactors. We need something a lot like Radiant.

Enter Radiant

While researching energy sources for an eventual Martian colony at SpaceX — after his roles as electrical systems lead for Falcon 1, the Grasshopper test vehicle, and Boring Company before it spun out — Doug Bernauer concluded that in addition to the immediate needs on earth, nuclear microreactors are a necessity if we are to become a spacefaring, multi-planetary species. Since this was not on SpaceX’s near-term roadmap, he co-founded Radiant with his colleagues Paul Keutelian and Bob Urberger, with the mission to develop the first portable, zero-emission power source that works anywhere — an alternative to fossil fuels for military and commercial applications in remote locations.

Radiant’s Kaleidos power generator will be an encapsulated, meltdown-proof core utilizing TRI-structural ISOtropic particle (TRISO) fuel, which the Office of Nuclear Energy claims to be “the most robust nuclear fuel on Earth”. Kaleidos is designed to generate 1.2 megawatts (MWh) of power without giving off any carbon emissions and can be deployed within 48 hours. (For context, 1.0 MWh could power roughly 1,000 average American homes for 6–8 years.) Kaleidos is fully autonomous with remote data monitoring, creates no on-site waste, and contains no liquid fuel (as with molten salt reactors), which in the unlikely case a reactor is compromised can seep into groundwater. Its air-cooled functionality means it doesn’t require water like past generations of nuclear models, which has played a large part in past nuclear accidents (e.g. Chernobyl, Fukushima).

The inner architecture of the Kaleidos reactor shows off Radiant’s patent-pending technology.

It’s important to note that Kaleidos is not a small modular reactor (SMR) but rather a microreactor. SMRs (e.g. NuScale, Oklo) range from 20 to 300 MWh and will be grid-scale power plants with modular reactors, while microreactors encompass anything less than 20 MWh and are portable. Kaleidos’ size — the entire system can fit in a shipping container — will allow it to be deployed rapidly and scaled as needed.

Demo of Radiant using digital twins technology, Hardware-In-The-Loop (HWIL), to create a high fidelity simulation of Kaleidos.

Radiant’s reactors will be well suited to a variety of markets, primarily consisting of:

1. Department of Defense (DoD) — where there is a clear need for reliable, portable power
2. Remote and mobile military installations
3. Resource-constrained geographies such as islands and those with harsh winters where renewables are impractical
4. Electric vehicle charging along remote highways
5. Disaster relief
6. Redundancy for critical infrastructures such as hospitals and data centers
7. Heat-intensive processes such as water desalination and wastewater treatment
8. Space — for both nuclear-electric propulsion and lunar or martian colonies.

“I expect fission surface power systems to greatly benefit our plans for power architectures for the moon and Mars and even drive innovation for uses here on Earth,” Jim Reuter, Associate Administrator for NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate

It will take a few years of technical and regulatory work to decarbonize these micro-and off-grid applications, but the future is bright thanks to profoundly technical builders like Doug, Paul, and the team they’re building… one might even say — radiant.

If you’re as fired up as we are about Radiant, check out their jobs page!