Click here to purchase copyright and share this article<\/a>.<\/p>\nMore than 25 years after Albert Heller hit it rich in the then-nascent field of high-speed semiconductors, he\u2019s hoping lightning will strike twice with a new venture in another industry he believes is ripe for disruption: green energy.<\/p>\n
Heller is the founder, CEO and chief technology officer of Boreal Energy Systems, a two-year-old startup designed to build mini-nuclear generators that provide affordable power to remote areas such as Canada\u2019s North.<\/p>\n
The University of Manitoba electrical engineering grad says it\u2019s an idea whose time has come. With Arctic sovereignty becoming the topic du jour in the Canadian military, Heller thinks Boreal\u2019s reactors \u2013 which would be small enough to fit in an average living room \u2013 are the ideal way to power the infrastructure necessary to keep the country\u2019s soldiers fighting fit in the North.<\/p>\n
Currently, electricity at Canada\u2019s military bases in the Arctic \u2013 as well as at civilian communities in the Far North \u2013 is supplied by diesel-fuelled generators, Heller explains. That fuel must be flown in from southern Canada on planes that burn even more diesel, he says, further adding to the \u201castronomical\u201d cost of supplying power to the North.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m 100 per cent confident that the military needs a non-diesel (energy) solution for the Arctic,\u201d Heller says.<\/p>\n
Also, the Canadian military is poised to buy a new fleet of high-tech fighter jets to patrol the country\u2019s northern borders, and planes like F-35s need to be housed in hangars with strict temperature and humidity controls that require \u201cimmense\u201d amounts of energy, he adds.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou cannot sustainably do that running on diesel generators,\u201d he says, while other sources of renewable energy such as wind turbines \u201cdon\u2019t like Arctic conditions.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
From Heller\u2019s perspective, that means one thing: \u201cThe only alternative is nuclear.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, after three years of research, Heller and his 14-person team at Boreal are confident they\u2019ll soon be ready to deliver a prototype for a nuclear reactor big enough to power an individual military base or a remote northern community for up to 15 years at as little as half the cost of diesel-generated electricity.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom an energy security and sustainability perspective, it\u2019s really the only option (the military) has to meet their power needs,\u201d Heller says.<\/p>\n
The technology has its roots at NASA, which nearly a decade ago began testing a concept for a compact, lightweight fission reactor that uses a cast-uranium alloy core roughly the size of a paper towel roll to generate heat, which is then converted into electricity.<\/p>\n
Tests proved that the system, called the Kilopower Reactor Using Stirling Technology (KRUSTY), could provide a stable, consistent source of electricity. While NASA\u2019s goal was to show that a mini-nuclear reactor could eventually power lengthy missions to places like the Moon and Mars, Boreal\u2019s units would be installed in other hostile environments much closer to home.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have essentially studied (KRUSTY) and figured out how to scale that and deploy it in Arctic conditions,\u201d Heller says.
<\/p>\n
Boreal Energy Systems is the successor to Boreal Power Systems, a firm Heller and business partner Mark Waite launched in 2008 to develop alternative energy sources as oil prices soared.
\n$600M sale
\nAt that time, Heller and Waite were looking for a new industry to conquer after their first venture, semiconductor-maker Extreme Packet Devices, sold for a whopping $600 million in 2000, when the dot-com boom was at its peak.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Heller, who grew up in Western Canada and moved to Ottawa in 1994 to take a job at Newbridge Networks, founded EPD in 1999 with Waite, a Boston-based business development specialist who came from Toshiba Corp., and former Newbridge colleagues Mark Janoska and Henry Chow.<\/p>\n
Just 12 months later, they parlayed an initial $3-million investment into a massive windfall that had \u201clife-changing monetary outcomes\u201d for the firm\u2019s first three dozen employees, Heller says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat kind of set me up to be a serial entrepreneur,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n
Heller worked with a few telecom ventures, then reunited with Waite a few years later to try his hand at a new industry.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a real need to look at renewables as an alternative energy,\u201d he says. \u201cWe started looking at where we could essentially harness energy and convert it into electricity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Their first concept \u2013 which involved using empty reservoirs at abandoned oil wells to store water that could be heated to create geothermal power \u2013 didn\u2019t pan out.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The company had developed its own heat-conversion technology and planned to partner with an oil company in North Dakota. Heller and Waite had a site picked out, but when a utility provider asked how much they planned to charge for their electricity, it quickly became clear the venture was doomed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe said, \u2018Well, maybe 30, 35 cents a kilowatt hour,\u2019\u201d Heller recalls with a chuckle. \u201cThey go, \u2018You realize we pay half a cent a kilowatt hour for the coal which is across the street from our coal-fired plant.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had the technology, but we just couldn\u2019t make the economics work. That in essence is the renewable (energy) business in a nutshell. There are tons of technologies out there that work, that are viable, but economically, they just don\u2019t make sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Boreal 2.0 is different, Heller says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The firm\u2019s nuclear technology is proven, he explains. Boreal\u2019s reactors \u2013 which would be about four metres wide and three metres high and house a nuclear reactor about two metres in diameter \u2013 would use pipes made of \u201csuperconductor\u201d niobium alloy to transfer heat almost instantly from the reactor\u2019s core to a mechanism that creates steam, which then powers the generator.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Each unit would contain more than 100 heat pipes, each less than a centimetre thick. Even if some of the pipes stopped working, \u201cwe still have other pipes that can move the heat\u201d and continue generating electricity without interruption, Heller says.<\/p>\n
The company is now working on a prototype for a 20-kilowatt unit, about the size of NASA\u2019s KRUSTY project, at a 7,000-square-foot facility in Kanata.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Because the plant isn\u2019t licensed by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, Boreal will demonstrate the system using electric heaters that mimic the heat created by fission. Heller says the firm has spent \u201cwell over a million dollars\u201d developing the unit, which is expected to be in full operation by mid-April.<\/p>\n
Boreal plans to hire as many as 120 additional employees over the next 18 months as part of its goal to scale its reactors to the point where they can generate up to three megawatts of electricity \u2013 enough to power a military base or a northern town. If all goes well, Heller says, the first reactors could be up and running by 2030.<\/p>\n
The company\u2019s goal is to serve as a \u201cspecialized utility\u201d for customers such as the Department of National Defence, Heller explains. Boreal would own, operate and maintain the units, building them with help from Indigenous and other construction partners.<\/p>\n
Heller predicts the strategy would be a win for Canadian taxpayers.
\n‘Economic risk is all on us’
\n\u201cIt helps alleviate some of that risk in the procurement model. Because at the end of the day, we\u2019re not asking the government to commit to buying a (multimillion-dollar) nuclear reactor, we\u2019re asking them to commit to buying electricity. So the economic risk is all on us. At the end of the day, they only pay for what we end up delivering to them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, the financial risks to Boreal are as clear as the northern night sky. Heller says he can see a day when there are more than 100 of Boreal\u2019s reactors scattered throughout the North, but not without a massive capital outlay.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Each unit is expected to cost tens of millions of dollars to manufacture. Heller\u2019s hope is that Boreal will make that money back over time, but it could take decades. In the meantime, the company will need cash \u2013 and plenty of it.<\/p>\n
Besides Heller, the firm\u2019s current backers include Waite as well as fellow co-founders Shail Paliwal, who was Extreme Packet Device\u2019s director of finance, and early EPD investor Lisa Wallace. Other investors include Michael Dunleavy and Debbie Weinstein, lawyers at Ottawa-based business law firm LaBarge Weinstein LLP.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Heller and his co-founders know they need investors with deeper pockets. The company is now in talks with Hanwha Ocean about bringing the South Korean shipbuilding giant on as a strategic partner.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hanwha is one of two firms bidding to replace Canada\u2019s aging submarine fleet, a project that comes with a price tag of more than $20 billion. The company says it is looking to team up with a variety of domestic technology and equipment suppliers as part of its proposal \u2013 a list that could include Boreal.<\/p>\n
In an email to OBJ last week, Hanwha Canada CEO Glenn Copeland said the company is “definitely interested\u201d in partnering with Boreal as it looks to add to its growing roster of Canadian collaborators.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“They need to demonstrate their industrial commitment to Canada,\u201d Heller says of Hanwha, adding the Korean firm was \u201cone of the first (potential partners) to approach us.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition, Boreal\u2019s brass is courting a number of venture capital firms and hopes to tap into resources such as the Canadian Infrastructure Bank and the Business Development Bank of Canada.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Heller sees reasons for optimism as Boreal takes shape, saying organizations such as BDC are \u201cbeing much more proactive\u201d about targeting homegrown defence firms for potential investments amid the federal government\u2019s military spending ramp-up.\u00a0<\/p>\n
New federal programs such as the $6.6-billion defence industrial strategy aimed at lessening the Canadian military\u2019s dependence on foreign-made technology are also a step in the right direction, he adds. But he stresses that the government needs to start spending money soon if Canadian enterprises like Boreal can expect to compete with the U.S., where dozens of startups are already experimenting with similar mini-nuclear plants.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Designing a nuclear reactor is not something that you can just do in a year,\u201d Heller says. \u201cIf we do have these needs, and those needs are being projected out three or five years from now, we have to start (design work) now in order to have the timelines converge. If we aren\u2019t successful in doing this, then it\u2019s going to be one of those 28 companies in the U.S. that Canada\u2019s military is buying technology from. And then it becomes a security risk.\u201d\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Albert Heller is the founder, CEO and chief technology officer of Boreal Energy Systems, a two-year-old startup designed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540862,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[49,48,20739],"class_list":["post-540861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-ottawa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}