The company, under the direction of publisher Ellen Archer, has been moving in this direction for some time. Last year, it hired former Hollywood talent agent Laura Popper as editorial director of franchise publishing. The goal is for Hyperion to be able to promote its books across multimedia platforms, and it is a lot easier to do that if a book’s author already has his or her own TV show.

The WSJ says that Hyperion will “look for books either linked to ABC television properties or that it believes can be extended to television or other corners of Walt Disney,” citing an unidentified source. Hyperion is already doing this to an extent, publishing books “written by” the main character on the show Castle. It also published cookbooks from the daytime show The Chew and by Jamie Oliver and tie-ins to the soap opera General Hospital.

Hyperion has also had plenty of non-TV-related bestsellers: It publishes Mitch Albom’s books, for example (The Five People You Meet in Heaven), Randy Pausch’s The Last Lecture and J.R. Moehringer’s The Tender Bar, among others. Those big names presumably won’t be sold off, but I’ve asked Hyperion for comment.

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Nucleon, nuclear power car, once under development by Ford

When greentech investing was in sort of a bubble in 2007/2008, it wasn’t all that uncommon for a former web or computing entrepreneur to take on a crazy dream in the energy sector. But now, after the recession and a difficult year for greentech, it’s quite a bit less common. However that’s not stopping entrepreneur Russ Wilcox who is the former CEO and co-founder of display-maker E Ink, and according to Boston.com, has just joined next-gen nuclear startup Transatomic Power as its CEO.

Transatomic Power is a startup designing a new type of nuclear reactor that can run off of nuclear waste and also produce significantly less waste than the traditional lightwater nuclear reactor. Called the “Waste Annihilating Molten Salt Reactor” or “WAMSR,” the reactor uses liquid fuel and molten salt — in contrast to solid fuel rods — and also has a more safe way to power down the system than a traditional lightwater nuclear reactor.

Happy, low waste, nuclear

In a TED talk video (see clip below) Transatomic co-founders Leslie Dewan and Mark Massie — both PhD students at MIT’s nuclear engineering department — point out how there’s been little innovation in the nuclear tech space over the years, partly because it’s hard for nuclear developers to adopt new technology in a world dominated by the lightwater nuclear reactor. Another reason for some slow periods of nuclear innovation was the nuclear incidents, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island (and probably add Fukushima to that list).

However, decades ago, there was a brief era of innovation for nuclear in the U.S., says Massie, who showed a slide of a nuclear powered automobile once under development by Ford called the Nucleon. Nowadays, though, new nuclear technology will likely be deployed first outside of the U.S., particularly in China, where there are dozens of new nuclear sites proposed and under development.

Waste Annihilating Molten Salt Reactor

Transatomic is only in the early stages of research and development. The company has raised less than a million dollars to start work on a prototype. Building full scale nuclear reactors can cost in the hundreds of millions to billions range.

Partly because of the high costs, and also because of the long time tables, there’s only a handful of new nuclear startups out there, and most focus on waste and safety says Dewan. TerraPower is a Bill Gates and Intellectual Ventures-backed nuclear startup building a so-called traveling wave nuclear reactor that can also use waste fuel for fuel. Kurion is a startup developing nuclear waste cleanup tech; Hyperion is a startup developing a micro-scale nuclear reactor; and NuScale is another startup building small scale nuclear power.

Most next-gen nuclear technology is being developed by scientists and old-school power execs. But some former web and computing entrepreneurs have found their way to nuclear. Bill Gates and Intellectual Ventures’ Nathan Myhrvold made their fortunes off of Microsoft. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has invested in nuclear fusion startup General Fusion. Perhaps the fortunes made off of computing and the web will be large enough to spark innovation in nuclear.

Images courtesy of Transatomic’s TED talk.

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This weekly feature tells the backstory of how one e-book became a bestseller, and highlights bestselling titles that are selling more copies in digital than in print.

This week’s featured title

The book: “Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong” by Edward Conard (Penguin/Portfolio, list price $14.99). “Unintended Consequences” is #24 on the New York Times nonfiction e-book bestseller list this week.

What it’s about: A former Bain exec explains how to grow the economy.

How it became a bestseller: “Unintended Consequences” was supposed to go on sale on June 28, but the New York Times Magazine decided to do a feature story on it in the May 6 money issue. Penguin was able to move up the e-book’s publication date to May 7, but the print book won’t be released until June 7.

“Unintended Consequences” on … Amazon | Apple | Barnes & Noble | Google | Kobo

New York Times bestseller list, week of 5/27/12

Here are the titles in the top-35 that appear on the e-book bestseller list, but not on the print bestseller list (click the link to expand the chart).

USA Today bestseller list, week of 5/10/12

USA Today includes all formats and genres in one list and notes which format of a book sold best. Here are the titles in the top-35 where e-books outsold print (click the link to expand the chart).

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This week’s featured title

The book: “A Brewing Storm” by Richard Castle (Hyperion, list price $2.99). “A Brewing Storm,” an e-single, is #13 on the New York Times e-book bestseller list this week, and #39 on the USA Today list. As of this writing, it’s #30 on the Nook bestseller list and does not appear on the Kindle bestseller list.

What it’s about: To be clear, Richard Castle is not a real person — he’s a character on the ABC show “Castle,” where he’s played by actor Nathan Fillion. On the show, Castle is a mystery novelist and author of the “Heat Wave” series. Hyperion, which is owned by ABC, released the “Heat Wave” titles as actual books. “A Brewing Storm” is the first in Castle’s “Derrick Storm” CIA series, which he also writes on the show. (Um…get it?) ABC will release two more Derrick Storm e-singles this summer.

How it became a bestseller: “Castle” fans had requested Derrick Storm books, which are often mentioned on the show. Hyperion hopes the “Storm” series will serve as a bridge between seasons 4 and 5 of “Castle” — the season 4 finale aired on May 7.

Members of “Club Castle,” the fan community on ABC’s Castle website, got early access to “A Brewing Storm”‘s cover by completing a trivia challenge March 26-28. They saw the cover before retailers did. ABC.com also posted three free chapters of the book. And the full-length “Heat Wave” was chosen as an Amazon Kindle Daily Deal on May 8, which likely drove readers to the e-single as well.

“A Brewing Storm” on … Amazon ($1.99) | Apple ($2.99) | Barnes & Noble ($1.97) | Google ($2.51) | Kobo ($2.99)

New York Times bestseller list, week of 5/20/12

Here are the titles in the top-35 that appear on the e-book bestseller list, but not on the print bestseller list (click the link to expand the chart).

USA Today bestseller list, week of 5/3/12

USA Today includes all formats and genres in one list and notes which format of a book sold best. Here are the titles in the top-35 where e-books outsold print (click the link to expand the chart).

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Hyperion, founded in 2007 and based in Denver, has been developing a “hot-tub-sized” nuclear battery that can be buried deep beneath the ground and used by off-grid communities, islands, governments in remote regions, and industry, like remote oil and gas companies. Each “nuclear-in-a-box” devices can produce 25 MW and last 10 years without refueling — after 10 years the unit is picked up and replaced with another (not refueled onsite).

The startup has been working with Los Alamos National Laboratory, and has an exclusive license to commercialize this technology from the lab through the tech transfer program. Hyperion still needs to get licensing from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to commercialize its nuclear device, but building its first device at the DOE test site is a step in that direction.

Hyperion is backed by investment firm Altira Group, and counts Lady Barbara Judge, the former chairman of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, as Chairman.

Hyperion is one of a few startups that have been developing both modular and new types of nuclear technology. NuScale is another small nuclear reactor maker, and NuScale recently brought in nuclear engineering company Fluor as a backer. TerraPower is also a nuclear startup, which is working on a traveling-wave reactor nuclear design, and which counts Bill Gates as an investor.

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The Tidemark Enterprise Performance Management Platform promises to bring real-time analytics to business users wielding iPads and smartphones — not just Excel jockeys in the CFO’s office who typically have access to IBM Cognos, Oracle Hyperion or other legacy EPM products, said Christian Gheorghe, co-founder and CEO of the Redwood City-based Tidemark.

Tidemark’s offering is built atop Terremark’s cloud computing infrastructure, using Cloudera’s Hadoop distribution, VMware virtualization and SnapLogic middleware that connects existing on-premises applications to the cloud, he said.

The goal is to offer business users, not just financial people, faster analysis of their data. “With today’s volatility — with the market up and down 3 percent in the last month, companies need a faster way to make forecasts,” Gheorghe explained.

Gheorghe, who spent two years at SAP after the German enterprise software giant bought OutlookSoft, knows a little something about the need to move past legacy software. Another big enterprise software name, PeopleSoft founder Dave Duffield, was an early Proferi investor.

Tidemark also just closed Series B financing from current investors including Greylock Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Duffield, with new money from Peter Currie, president of Currie Capital (and former CFO of Netscape Communications), and Phil Wilmington, former co-president of PeopleSoft and another OutlookSoft alum. Total venture funding now stands at about $11 million, about half of which came from the latest round.

Image courtesy of Tidemark.

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“If they do what they are supposed to, nuclear reactor construction will be much more costly and much less inviting as a policy option as a result of the Fukusima accident,” said Cooper in a research note.

According to Cooper’s research, the construction costs for reactors after Three Mile Island (the nuclear incident in 1979 in Pennsylvania), but before Chernobyl (the incident in 1986 in Ukraine) were 95 percent higher than those completed before Three Mile Island. That resulted in electricity costs that were 40 percent higher. The construction costs of the reactors constructed after Chernobyl were 89 percent higher than those completed between Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, which delivered electricity costs 42 percent higher.

It’s not rocket science to realize that major disasters would cause extra safety costs, but that’s a massive leap. Cooper says the cause was a continued extension of the construction period and new design changes required by safety concerns.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is already reviewing nuclear plants planned for construction in the U.S. and has a task force assembled to see if there are lessons to be learned from the Japanese disaster. Nuclear provides 20 percent of the electricity in the U.S. Other countries like Germany are reviewing their nuclear plans, too.

Beyond cost, the Japanese nuclear disaster could lead to the development of next-generation nuclear technology coming “to a screeching halt” in the short term. That’s what Ray Rothrock, a partner at venture firm Venrock and a former nuclear engineer, predicted. Rothrock was working as a nuclear engineer back when Three Mile Island occurred and witnessed at least a six-month clamp-down on nuclear tech as the NRC reviewed the industry.

For a startup like NuScale, which is making a modular nuclear reactor design and is planning on submitting its application to the NRC for review within 18 months, a very busy and cautious NRC could mean a significantly longer time to pass regulatory hurdles and get to market.

It’s generally believed the ongoing situation at the nuclear plants run by Tokyo Electric Power Co. looks to have surpassed the severity of Three Mile Island. Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu made that assessment in a hearing before the House Energy and Commerce committee. That could mean the cost effects, tech ramifications and policy decision are even greater than after previous disasters.

Image courtesy of rowens27.

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Take small-scale nuclear plants, which are the target of some $38.8 million in proposed 2011 DOE spending. These are pretty much limited to aircraft carriers and submarines nowadays, but could represent a way for venture capitalists to get in on the nuclear resurgence without spending the billions required for today’s large-scale plants. While experienced nuclear power contractors such as Toshiba and Babcock & Wilcox are working on small scale reactors — as are government labs such as Sandia National Laboratory — so are startups such as NuScale Power and Hyperion Power Generation.

At the same time, companies are researching ways to utilize new fuels for nuclear power, or, in the case of Bill Gates-backed TerraPower, use the fuel normally relegated to waste in today’s fission reactors. And fusion power is being pursued by a handful of startups alongside the government-funded research going on around the world.

Of course, getting into the nuclear power business isn’t like launching a consumer electronics or networking startup. Anyone seeking to commercialize nuclear power technology will face years of testing and certification by government entities such as the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and that means investors will have to be patient. Still, for those willing to wait, here are some of the more intriguing (and well-funded) opportunities out there in the new world of nuclear startups.

NuScale Power: This Corvalis, Ore.-based startup landed $2.65 million from CMEA Capital in September 2008, with the goal of deploying technology developed by DOE and Oregon State University. It wants to make modular, 45-megawatt reactors that can be linked together to generate power at about the same cost — 6 to 9 cents per kilowatt-hour — as traditional, larger nuclear plants. Beyond saving money by building in pieces, NuScale’s passive water cooling system is safer than traditional reactors, the company claims. The company has plans to submit its design to the NRC in early 2012, which will begin a multi-year approval process that could see reactors available by late in the decade.

Hyperion Power Generation: This Santa Fe, N.M.-based startup has landed an undisclosed investment from private equity firm Altira Group to commercialize a “fission battery” technology that emerged from Los Alamos National Laboratory. The Hyperion Power Module — a self-contained cylinder about the size of a hot tub — promises 70 megawatts of heat and 25 megawatts of steam-driven electricity for about $25 million apiece, and is meant to be buried next to remote communities, military bases, tar sand extraction operations and other power-hungry, hard-to-reach areas.

While it’s still on the hunt for a Series B round of funding, Hyperion has been valued at $100 million by its investors, and has plans to open factories capable of churning out about 4,000 units in the coming years. Of course, like its brethren, Hyperion will face a years-long process of seeking approval from the NRC, but it already has a purported customer —  Romanian investment company TES Group has said it wants to buy six modules when they’re ready.

TerraPower: Think of it as a nuclear reactor that powers itself from its own waste. TerraPower wants to commercialize a “traveling wave nuclear reactor” design that’s been under development since the mid-1990s. The basic idea is to start with enriched uranium — the fuel for today’s nuclear plants — and then utilize the depleted byproduct of the fission process to produce more power. That could lead to a nuclear reactor that doesn’t need to be refueled, or have its waste disposed of.

The startup also has deep Microsoft roots — it’s a spin-off of Intellectual Ventures, the think tank founded by former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold, and Bill Gates is a principal owner. Those deep-pocket backers could be useful, as TerraPower is looking at about 10 years to demonstrate a working plant, and about 15 years to commercial deployment, according to a presentation from TerraPower President John Gilleland.

General Fusion: Fusion power is the holy grail of nuclear power — enormously powerful and waste-free. And, of course, it’s incredibly difficult to accomplish, and is mostly limited to big, government-funded research projects such as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility and MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center. Still, there are startups getting funded to pursue fusion, and one of them is Vancouver’s General Fusion, which has raised some $13.5 million from investors, including Canadian firm Chrysalix Partners to work on “magnetized target fusion.”

The idea is to use hundreds of mechanical pistons to drive a shock wave through a lead-lithium mixture surrounding a plasma of hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium, fusing them into hydrogen. Nuclear experts say it’s technically feasible, but difficult to accomplish. General Fusion has said hopes to demonstrate a working model in 2013.

Tri-Alpha Energy: This secretive fusion startup reportedly raised $40 million from Venrock Ventures and other investors in 2007 to commercialize technology out of the University of California at Irvine that involves a mixture of hydrogen and boron that “chase” one another in a plasma electric generator, according to a U.C. Irvine report. The company may be set to demonstrate its technology some time this year, according to Greentech Media.

Helion Energy: Another would-be fusion startup is Seattle-based Helion Energy, which said in April that it’s seeking up to $20 million to build a working model of its engine, intended to electromagnetically propel ionized hydrogen to speeds of millions of miles an hour, generating immense amounts of heat. The company is aiming at a full-scale prototype by 2011 or 2012 and a commercial model within a decade, Helion President Philip Wallace said in April.

Image courtesy of Hyperion.

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