Nuclear Energy Innovation Summit at ANS Student Conference
By Will Boyd
A first-time event at this year’s American Nuclear Society Student
Conference was the Nuclear Energy Innovation Summit, held at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The premiere event for the summit
was a
Pitch Contest
that challenged students to effectively communicate their ideas in 90
seconds by using only a single slide per team, followed by 90 seconds of
questions from a diverse panel of judges.
Pitch Contest
Twelve teams representing eight universities presented their ideas
for how to change the world through nuclear energy—ranging from
re-purposed submarine cores for powering remote communities, to an
online hub for reactor design collaboration, to co-generation of nuclear
power for electricity and process heat for shale oil production.
Sponsoring three cash awards for the summit’s competitions was The
MIT Clean Energy Prize, which engages young entrepreneurs to tackle the
world’s most critical energy challenges. The three sponsored awards
were the Most Innovative Pitch ($125), the Most Practical Pitch ($125),
and the Best Pitch ($250).
The Best Pitch Prize was awarded to Cadet John Asbach and Cadet
Branden Passons of the U.S. Military Academy for their pitch titled
One in Eight: A Novel Approach to Improving Computer Aided Detection in Mammography Screenings.
click to enlarge
Cadet Branden Passons, Mac MacFarland (CEO of Luminant), and Cadet John Asbach
Click here to see all the Pitch slides
Idea storm
The Innovation Summit also included an
Idea Storm,
a fast-paced, high-energy brainstorming session that was well received
by the students attending the conference. The Idea Storm opened with
inspirational talks by Eugene Kuznetsov and Michael Short, both
successful pro-nuclear entrepreneurs, about how the start-up model for
innovation that has proven so successful in the software industry may be
applied to the nuclear industry. Following the talks, the students
split into groups to dream up the next great ideas in nuclear energy.
The areas for discussion were
Small Modular Reactors, Space Reactors, Waste Management, and
Generation-V Reactors. The
students found the discussions to be an excellent integration of the
technology, policy, and economic issues surrounding these key areas.
The
Small Modular Reactors discussion group highlighted the
opportunities for SMRs to be used for power generation in isolated
communities and for resource extraction in remote parts of the world.
The
Space Reactors discussion group focused on many areas,
including the potential for nuclear energy to power space vehicles to
mine asteroids for rare earth metals, a vibrant space for start-ups in
the private space industry. The
Waste Management discussion group focused on the challenges to making deep borehole disposal a reality in the United States today. Finally, the
Generation-V Reactors
discussion group defined the standards for a “Market-Driven Reactor
Design” as a successor to the technological basis behind Generation-IV
designs.
Sam Telleen, Sloan School MBA candidate, at Idea Storm
Owing to the summit’s success, plans are already under discussion for
a 2014 summit and for online “tech challenges” that will encourage open
collaboration and ideas on key, self-contained industry challenges.
Next year’s Innovation Summit at MIT will incorporate an even more
vibrant schedule of events for nuclear engineering students to convene
to network and present their ideas. Those interested in participating
and/or sponsoring the 2014 Innovation Summit or upcoming “tech
challenges” should contact the chair, Will Boyd, at
wboyd@mit.edu. Information regarding the event will be trending on Twitter under the handle @NukeInnovators.
____________________________
Boyd
Will Boyd is a PhD student in MIT’s Nuclear Science &
Engineering Department and a research assistant for the Computational
Reactor Physics Group. He is currently developing OpenMOC—a C++/CUDA
code implementing the method of characteristics algorithm to solve for
the 2D flux distribution in a nuclear reactor core. His current work is
on exploring massively parallel algorithms for MOC on machines with one
or more GPU accelerators.
