Ultimately I do not know whether Oklo and/or their founders know what they're doing, though I hope for the sake of the planet that they do and they succeed.
But calling them out for having no nuclear industry experience seems somewhere between aggressive and wrong. Both founders have graduate degrees in nuclear science from MIT and have been in the nuclear industry _at Oklo_ for the better part of a decade. A quick LinkedIn search also shows that Oklo employs other people with nuclear industry experience, including at the NRC itself.
If someone had a PhD from MIT in machine learning and then worked at Google doing machine learning for 8 years, would you say that person has no machine learning industry experience? At face value such a person would seem like a plausible expert!
I mean that they've never been at an organization that actually builds reactors or reactor components. Building working machines, at scale, at a price that customers can afford, is hard even if you're not in a heavily regulated industry. I'd also be skeptical of the chances for a pair of people to successfully move from graduate research in solar technology at MIT to commercializing a new solar cell design through their startup.
Hah, it's the opposite of "you need 5 years of experience in a 3 year old technology": they need X years of experience in an industry that has been dead for the last 40.
Looking at the number of failed kickstarters for physical objects that are multiple orders of magnitude less complicated than a nuclear power plant with new technology might be instructive.
Even if you really had to go to France or China to get some experts (which is not the case) it would be quite reasonable to expect that they do so; using a combination of modern inventions such as airplanes and money it should be possible to get some of them across the ocean.
Other companies that manufacture nuclear components in the US include Areva, General Electric, and Framatome. But Westinghouse is the only company that has a new reactor design currently under construction in the US.
France does not appear to have the expertise either, Flamanville and Olkiluoto have been disasters.
Plus, it's really not clear how they could translate their organizational skills to entirely different culture. Maybe it would work, but it's certainly not a sure thing.
> I hope for the sake of the planet that they do and they succeed.
The planet doesn't need nuclear. It just needs a concerted push to roll out renewables on a bigger scale and invest into promising long/medium term energy storage solutions (like various gravity storage solutions)
The opportunity costs for nuclear are just way too high.
If they started an ML company that applied for grants and failed to supply the required information, it would be acceptable to inquire about their expertise.
Academic experience does not equal Industry experience.
But calling them out for having no nuclear industry experience seems somewhere between aggressive and wrong. Both founders have graduate degrees in nuclear science from MIT and have been in the nuclear industry _at Oklo_ for the better part of a decade. A quick LinkedIn search also shows that Oklo employs other people with nuclear industry experience, including at the NRC itself.
If someone had a PhD from MIT in machine learning and then worked at Google doing machine learning for 8 years, would you say that person has no machine learning industry experience? At face value such a person would seem like a plausible expert!