Bill Gates-led $1B energy fund expands startup portfolio fighting climate change (opens in new tab)

No question. Just cool that you are here responding to them. Really interesting article. Also read the CFS feature. Also very interesting. Should note the link to the Carbon Cement feature goes to the CFS feature instead.

Is there a way you would recommend that a bay area clean energy startup reach out to the fund?

I'm curious about why you included this sentence: 'The startups announced by BEV so far are all North American, and most of their leadership is also largely white and male'

I mean, isn't it enough for BEV to help fund a small sample of companies tackling some of the most challenging problems on earth? Probability of success in such an endeavour is already vanishingly small without adding further constraints. Aren't investments like these best directed at the companies with most promise, with the investors blind as to gender and race, with equality problems tackled elsewhere (e.g. in employment regulation etc.)?

I guess the answer depends on which country you're talking about. The U.S. government pioneered nuclear power but has done very little with it over the past several decades, and has impeded private efforts. Canada has a regulatory system friendlier to reactor startups than the U.S., and at least one molten salt reactor company (Terrestrial Energy) is making good progress there. China has an aggressive government program developing every type of GenIV reactor, and Terrapower moved there after giving up on the U.S.

This article mainly covers the MIT fusion effort. For years they struggled to keep their government funding, despite their tokamak having the most powerful magnetic field of any in the world. They finally lost that battle, and now private investors are stepping in. It doesn't appear that there was an alternative.

Government can obviously throw more money but it tends to be more conservative about what it funds. And private funding can go pretty far; it was interesting to see that TAE (Tri Alpha Energy, an aneutronic fusion effort) is up to $800 million in funding. They started work in 1999, so long-term fundamental research does seem to be achievable in a startup setting.

If a self-sustaining nuclear fission reaction had not been previously demonstrated, could you build a proof-of-concept in 2018 on a startup budget? I would say yes. It is conceivable that you could build a modern equivalent of Chicago Pile-1 on a startup budget, assuming that you didn't implement any more safety features than the original CP-1. And if nuclear fission had never been demonstrated before this hypothetical startup probably wouldn't have much in the way of safety regulations to consider.

The more difficult question: how would a startup come to experiment with ways to build a self-sustaining fission reaction if the basic concept hadn't been demonstrated before? Something would have to be very different about history. As an improbable hand-wave, let's say that academic scientists had only ever experimented with fast-neutron fission, and didn't realize that natural uranium could sustain a chain reaction if the neutrons were moderated. We're probably deep into alt-history "World War II never happened, also the world has been surprisingly peaceful" fiction with that hand-wave.

Finally, if you really mean current nuclear power technology, e.g. one of the actual Generation III reactor designs currently operating, plus supporting infrastructure -- no, a startup could not invent all of that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_III_reactor#Generat...

You could easily blow through 100 million dollars just trying to prototype the enrichment process for the uranium that your reactor needs as fuel. Never mind actually sourcing enough natural uranium in a world where uranium has previously been a niche material like rubidium, building a uranium enrichment plant, fabricating fuel elements, forging a huge pressure vessel, developing the whole field of nuclear engineering...

A metric ton is substantially different to a ton in the old English

So the tech inside Zero Mass Water is not the same as dehumidifier. Instead, they use a sophisticated absorbent to selectively capture water, heat it to release the water, then sterilize and add minerals.

But you're right. It's the company that I was most surprised to see in the list. The economics don't yet make sense to me.

I pushed Carmichael Roberts (BEV's head of investing) to explain. He said he has studied water startups for years, and he really likes the tech. But more importantly, he is very impressed by Cody's skill to sell this unit and far wide. It's already in 16 countries.

I absolutely agree with you - this is bad allocation of money and effort.

I just cannot think of a niche where these units would actually make sense.

It is a terrible idea to use these for disaster relief - never mind the cost, it would be better to ship in an equal weight of water.

It is wrong to use these wherever there is salt water, or polluted water - it would be far cheaper to purify whatever water there is.

And it is a bad idea to use them at remote locations, as emergency supplies or wherever reliability is important. Again, equal weight of bottled water would be much cheaper, and safer - bottled water will not break down.

I invite anybody (Mr Carmichael Roberts or company itself) to outline a scenario where this technology is preferred over reverse osmosis, or bottled water. The "Applications" page on the company web site demonstrates IMO 100% wastefully inappropriate applications. Happy to comment on any specific one of those.

Yes it is energy intensive but it's for a niche application:

Allowing access for clean water in areas where it is prohibitively more expensive (monetarily and energy wise) to get clean water. Think remote or disaster stricken areas (with appropriate conditions to use the device).