Doug Bernauer
Founder & CEO, Radiant. On 2 shows, 3 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveengineer@DougBernauer ↗radiantnuclear.com ↗
After spending 12 years at SpaceX working on systems such as the Grasshopper rocket and Hyperloop, Doug Bernauer co-founded Radiant in 2020 to build factory-manufactured, transportable nuclear micro-reactors. Radiant is developing Kaleidos, a 1-megawatt portable micro-reactor designed to replace diesel generators for remote communities, military installations, and data centers.
2shows
3appearances
34statements
13resolved
9supported
2contradicted
69%fully supported
Everything Doug Bernauer said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Bernauer: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is not blocking nuclear innovation
“The way I see it, the NRC are not really blocking things.”
Radiant microreactors meet NRC radiation limits outside a 35-foot perimeter
“We are down at one megawatt, so enough power for 1000 homes. And we can mass produce these in a factory, deliver them to a site, and with no infrastructure just outside of a 35 foot fence line, you can operate them and be at the NRC public dose limit for a rea…”
Bernauer: Town diesel power causes 12 premature deaths over 20 years
“And if you look at what happens in a town over 20 years of span if you pick a diesel genset instead of a reactor there's something like 12, ah, deaths that are going to occur prematurely from the use of diesel.”
Bernauer: Nuclear is the only viable way to power Mars fuel production
“And so I looked into solar power on Mars and found that was really challenging, and then I looked into nuclear power on Mars and found that was the only way.”
Bernauer: Deployable and retrievable nuclear reactors require sizing around 1 MW
“It's only possible if you make a size about one megawatt, right? Make a small enough reactor, you can do this, transport it there and back again sort of trick, and take the fuel back, and so you have, like, no nuclear strings attached.”
Radiant will achieve reactor criticality and 700°C operations by 2026
“Since 2020, we've been on target for going there by 20, 26, and then we'll go critical. The system is designed to go to over 700 degrees Celsius, and then we'll run for 150 hours continuously.”
Bernauer: Mass-produced micro-reactors will enable interstellar human travel
“Nuclear micro-reactors that are mass-produced, that are reliable in the most wild scenario enables humans to leave the star that we were born at, the sun, and go to other ones.”
Bernauer: Making life multi-planetary requires nuclear technology to succeed
“The mission of making life multi-planetary It needs to have nuclear technology for that to really blossom and to succeed”
Bernauer: Microreactors can be factory-built at 50 units per year
“You can make a one megawatt reactor that is factory constructed, 50 units a year, so a reactor every week coming off the line, and then you can transport that by land, sea, or air to any place in the world.”
Ceramic-coated TRISO nuclear fuel cannot melt down up to 1600°C
“The temperature limit of the fuel becomes this extremely high value, and you can go to about 1600 Celsius before there's an appreciable failure rate of the ceramic coated fuel. So what it means is you can't melt down the fuel.”
No new nuclear reactor design has been fueled in 50 years
“There's no new nuclear design that has been fueled in the U S in the last 50 years.”
Radiant's Kaleidos microreactor can become operational within two days on site
“With a reactor like this, that can be quickly moved and doesn't need a lot of infrastructure. You can be operating it in about two days after getting it on a site, which means you can use it for disaster relief.”
Bernauer predicts Radiant will complete and ship a reactor in 2025
“Twenty-twenty-four will be the last year that we're playing around with the analysis paralysis and the design and answering all the questions, the regulator and simulating things in the twin. And twenty-twenty-five is going to be actually building the thing up…”
Bernauer: Large reactor builds are far slower in US than Asia
“And the typical construction timeline is really like six to 15 years on the big reactors right now, depending who makes them, even for the exact same reactor, like an AP 1000, built in the US is very slow, built in Asia is very fast.”
Bernauer: Radiant targets 2026 field demonstration for microreactor
“Our timeline has not changed since we started the company in twenty-twenty. We want to do a field demonstration in twenty-twenty-six.”
Doug Bernauer: Radiant Focuses on Building Reactors, Not Reactor Buildings
“What we want to be doing is building reactors, not reactor buildings.”
Bernauer predicts multiple nuclear entities will conduct fuel tests in 2026
“And I think others are going to do that same thing in that same year. So it won't even be just us. It'll be several different entities.”
Radiant microreactors cost tens of millions versus billions for conventional reactors
“So the, I mean, the really big ones that we have now are on the order of a few billion dollars for reactor. A tiny little one that I'm working on is on the order of tens of millions of dollars, but you know, everyone's design is quite a bit different, but it's…”
German operators proved safety by leaving overheating nuclear reactor unmonitored overnight
“There's a HTGR reactor in Germany, AVR, where the operators would actually just leave the operating room, And allow the system to overheat and they would leave it and leave it overnight in that state and then come back and then start operating the next day.”
Bernauer: Nuclear energy will leapfrog natural gas
“Natural gas, which I agree with Dr. Huff the low cost of it definitely caused us to adopt that, to fill that need, rather than nuclear, but I think nuclear can leapfrog it.”
Bernauer: Federal microreactor demonstration program is key to commercialization
“I think a real micro-reactor demonstration program from the federal side would probably be the single biggest thing we could do to accelerate our efforts to commercialization.”
Bernauer: INL Built 52 Reactors by 1977 and None Since
“There were actually 52 nuclear reactors built at Idaho National Laboratory in a 21 year span, the last of which was in 1977, and none since then.”
Bernauer began researching nuclear power while designing SpaceX Mars systems
“But I also worked on Hyperloop and on the boring company, kind of ideas that came from that while I was there and on Mars systems, which is how I started to look at nuclear.”
Radiant microreactor contains 120 million poppy seed-sized ceramic fuel kernels
“What we're doing is these tiny poppy seed size kernels of fuel. There are about a hundred and twenty million of them. For a hundred kilograms of uranium and this is all in a core that's, you know, only four feet in diameter.”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Doug's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 SOURCERYLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Radiant | 1 | 21 | 78% 7/9 | full record on Sourcery → |
 a16zLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Radiant | 2 | 13 | 50% 2/4 | full record on the a16z Podcast → |