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Lux Capital closes $245M third fund, remains committed to energy tech

Katie Fehrenbacher — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 12:30:55 +0000

Not all venture firms are joining the cleantech exodus. Lux Capital, which invests in a lot of science-based, hardware and infrastructure innovations, has closed its third fund of $245 million, and Lux Capital partner Peter Hebert told me that the firm will continue its current model of investing about a third of its funds into energy tech, a third in information technology and a third in health and biotechnology.

A few of Lux’s portfolio companies appear to be doing pretty well. Kurion, a startup developing nuclear waste cleanup tech, scored a breakthrough deal to help clean waste water for Japan’s Fukushima nuclear meltdown. About a year ago I called them “the most successful greentech startup you haven’t heard of.” Portfolio company Shapeways has become synonymous with the emerging industry of 3D printing, and smart grid startup Gridco just launched to build a next-gen power grid using solid state transformers. Portfolio firms that have been acquired include skin company Magen Biosciences, LED tech company Crystal IS, and chip companies SiBeam and Silicon Clock.

“There’s definitely been negative sentiment towards cleantech in the market,” said Hebert, but it really “depends on the individual Limited Partners” (the groups that put money into venture firms). Our LPs still see substantial innovation ahead around energy and resources, said Hebert. Going forward in 2013 “we remain disciplined and selective,” said Hebert.

While Lux says it remains committed to energy tech investing, other firms have been unable to raise new cleantech funds, and some have dialed back or transformed their energy and cleantech focused divisions to make them more capital efficient. VantagePoint Capital Partners shut down its efforts to raise a $1.25 billion cleantech fund recently, and firms like Mohr Davidow and Draper Fisher Jurvetson have reduced their commitments and turned to backing IT-based cleantech, or cleanweb companies only. In 2012, venture capital firms put a third less money into cleantech companies compared to 2011.

Still some investors like Lux Capital still see the potential of energy and resources technology innovation. Canadian firm Chrysalix says its energy focused portfolio is doing well. NEA says its still committed to energy investing, though its scaled back a bit. Khosla Ventures still continues to make aggressive and many bets across sustainability from energy to agriculture to smart grid to biofuels.

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Post Fukushima, Kurion eyes former nuclear weapons site in U.S.

Katie Fehrenbacher — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 18:27:05 +0000

Now that nuclear waste cleanup startup Kurion has successfully helped clean tens of millions of gallons of contaminated water at the Fukushima nuclear power plants in Japan, the venture-backed company is now eying a new nuclear waste target, according to the Wall Street Journal: a former nuclear weapons production site the U.S. That would be the Hanford Site in Washington state, where the federal government made plutonium for the first nuclear bomb, as well as other nuclear weapons.

After the Hanford site was decommissioned at the end of the Cold War, its waste wasn’t cleaned or stored properly, and it is now one of the most contaminated nuclear sites in the U.S. There are 56 million gallons of radioactive sludge in underground tanks at the site and the clean-up process is expected to take four decades. While a lot of big and small companies have tried to tackle Hanford, there’s been years of delays and cost overruns on projects, says the New York Times.

Near of the Sea Water intake of Unit2 in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station

Kurion wants to use its success in the wake of Fukushima to get the contract from the Department of Energy to clean up Hanford. The Wall Street Journal reports that Kurion opened a testing facility at Hanford last month, but hasn’t yet secured a deal.

If Kurion is able to gain the clean-up job, it would be yet another win for the profitable, four-year-old scrappy startup, which is backed by Lux Capital and Firelake Capital. Kurion was the only startup — among a group of giant conglomerates like Hitachi, Toshiba and AREVA — to work on the cleanup of the Fukushima site, and I called the company “the most successful greentech startup you haven’t heard of,” back in January of this year.

Kurion makes a cleanup material (they call it ion specific media) that soaks up radioactive cesium and iodine in contaminated water and contains the waste by shrinking it down to a small-enough size, then turning it into glass, a process called vitrification. Vitrification is the standard way to cleanup cesium and iodine in nuclear-contaminated water, but Kurion says it makes that process cheaper, faster and more efficient. Often, the standard vitrification process requires the contaminated materials to be moved to a centralized plant, but Kurion’s process brings the technology to the contaminated materials.

A few months ago Kurion bought some more vitrification technology — called GeoMelt technologies developed at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Labs — which were already under consideration by the DOE for being used to cleanup Hanford.

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When digital entrepreneurs go nuclear, literally

Katie Fehrenbacher — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 18:05:14 +0000

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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Kurion acquires nuclear to glass cleanup tech

Katie Fehrenbacher — Tue, 29 May 2012 14:43:13 +0000

Kurion, a startup that has developed technology that cleans up nuclear waste and is one of the most successful cleantech firms you haven’t heard of, has been acquiring more cleanup tech. On Monday the startup announced that it has acquired the assets of Impact Services (called GeoMelt), and the licenses from a company called GeoSafe (owned by Battelle), and all this intellectual property covers technology that turns nuclear waste into glass.

That process for turning waste (from nuclear and other substances) into glass is called vitrification, and it’s the widely accepted best practice for how to clean up and store nuclear waste. Kurion already owned some aspects of this technology, and Kurion’s business model is to make the nuclear clean up process more distributed, more flexible and more low cost. Traditionally vitrification has been a more centralized process.

Workers Controlling the Remote Cleaners at Fukushima

Kurion owns another nuclear clean up tech called “ion specific media,” which is a material that basically soaks up nuclear particles in water and liquids and shrinks the materials down to a small enough size so that it can be turned into glass. Kurion used its ion specific media to remove 70 percent of the radioactivity from the waste water at the Fukushima nuclear plant after last year’s disaster.

Winning a seat at the table for helping clean up Fukushima was a huge win for Kurion. It was the only startup involved in the water cleanup process — other firms included France’s AREVA, Japan’s Toshiba and Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy — and it also dominated the cleanup process.

Four-year-old Kurion is already profitable, is based in Irvine, Calif., and is backed by Lux Capital and Firelake Capital Management.

The GeoMelt technologies were originally developed at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Labs, have been used commercially since the 1990′s and have treated more than 26,000 metric tons of waste, says Kurion. The GeoMelt tech is also under consideration for use at the sizable nuclear clean up site the Hanford Tank Farm.

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Top 10 Phat Startups of 2012

Barb Darrow — Tue, 08 May 2012 12:56:04 +0000

There’s nothing wrong with making phone apps or mobile games. But Jamie Goldstein thinks that startups — and their backers — should attack bigger, meatier problems. So, while many people talk up the virtues of lean startups, Goldstein thinks it’s time to focus on companies willing to take big risk — and it is risky to attack big problems. These companies are what Goldstein, a general partner at North Bridge Venture Partners, calls Phat startups.

Here are Goldstein’s Top 10 Phat Startups in no particular order. (Full disclosure: five of the 10 are North Bridge affiliated companies and they’ve been designated with NBVP.)

1. Heartland Robotics: iRobot and MIT alum Rodney Brooks’ Heartland Robotics is making robots flexible and cheap enough to do manual tasks that most people don’t want to do. Boston-based Heartland’s success in building “teachable” robots could mean that repetitive jobs that might otherwise go to China stay put.

2. Foro Energy: Littleton, Colo.-based Foro develops drills for oil exploration that use high-powered lasers to do the job faster and cleaner. The company says its technology will enable oil companies to drill ten times faster than traditional drill bits. (NBVP)

3. Kurion: Kurion attacks the tricky problem of remediating nuclear waste. It’s take is to encapsulate the by-products in glass which can then be buried and stored for hundreds of years more safely. Kurion technology, which GigaOM’s Katie Fehrenbacher once called the most successful greentech startup you’ve never heard of, has been used extensively in the cleanup from the Fukushima disaster.

4. Actifio: Most big companies store way more copies (15 to 100 of them) of their data than they could possibly need. That’s because their various systems don’t know what copies are being held by other systems. Actifio’s plan is to enable those companies to keep and manage one copy of all that stuff. Actifio is based in Waltham, Mass. (NBVP)

5. Sand 9: Cambridge, Mass.-based Sand 9 makes cell phone components that enable them to scan many frequencies to cover their LTE, 3G, GSM, WiFi bases. Boston University spin-off Sand 9 builds MEMS-based resonators to accomplish that goal. It’s crazy to have to build eight different RF chains for each band there’s a real need for flexible components to cover that range, Goldstein said.

6. DataXu: This company uses “rocket science” (seriously) to perform real-time analysis of how effective spending on advertising — online, mobile and video — is. Co-founder and CTO Bill Simmons developed the core technology at MIT while he was earning his Ph.D. in aeronautics and astronautics. (He helped develop and test the real-time flight software that handled guidance and navigation for the Atlas rocket program.)

7. CompassEOS: Startup CompassEOS, (aka Compass Electro Optical Systems), based in Netanya, Israel, is still in stealth mode but Goldstein said it uses an electro-optical interconnect to produce what will be a next-generation router that he said will be smaller faster, cheaper and more energy efficient than the current state of the art. (NBVP)

8. CoolPlanet Energy Systems: This sounds to good to be true. CoolPlanet‘s technology claims to produce “carbon negative” gas” out of biomass. As GigaOM reported last December, it has some pretty potent backers in BP, GE, Google and ConocoPhillips. The Camarillo, Calif. company builds tractor-trailer sized machines, that are clustered around biomass sources — farms, forests. They ingest corncobs, woodchips, whatever biomass is available, and spit out gasoline. (NBVP)

9. Makani Power: Makani creates airborne wings that it says can generate power much less expensively than traditional wind turbines. The company’s “tethered wings” can be deployed at high altitudes over land or sea, wherever wind is stronger and more consistant, according to the Makani website. Wing design eliminates 90 percent of the material used in conventional wind turbines.

10. Plexxi: Still in stealth mode, Cambridge-Mass.-based Plexxi isn’t saying much about what it’s doing other than it has to do with revamping data center networks to make them more flexible. Goldstein said the goal is to “make traditional 3-tier networking architectures obsolete.” The company is just now kicking off a road show so stay tuned. (NBVP)

Goldstein is not the first to call for more, um, gravitas from startups, but it’s good to be reminded that startups can — and should — attack the big problems.

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Kurion dominates Fukushima radioactive water cleanup

Katie Fehrenbacher — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 15:23:47 +0000

Nuclear waste cleanup startup Kurion (which I once called the most successful greentech startup you haven’t heard of) says it’s responsible for removing 70 percent of the radioactivity from the waste water at the Fukushima nuclear plant after last year’s disaster. Kurion says, since it shipped its technology to Japanese utility TEPCO last summer, the Kurion system has processed 36 million gallons of contaminated waste water and removed 9.4 million curies of cesium (see graphic below).

Kurion has developed a material it calls “ion specific media,” which basically soaks up nuclear particles and then shrinks the materials down to a small enough size so that it can be turned into glass, which is a process called vitrification. It’s the standard process used by the nuclear industry to encapsulate waste, but Kurion has created a more modular process, so the cleanup technology can be quickly shipped to a contaminated site, then the waste can be safely shipped elsewhere for storage.

Kurion was one of a group of companies selected by the beleaguered utility to clean the seawater that had been pumped into the reactors to cool them down. Other companies that made up the cleanup crew included France’s AREVA, Japan’s Toshiba and Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy; Kurion was the only startup included. Kurion is a profitable four-year-old, 15-person, startup based in Irvine, Calif., which was backed by Lux Capital and Firelake Capital Management.

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The most successful greentech startup you haven’t heard of: Kurion

Katie Fehrenbacher — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 17:00:17 +0000

Workers Controlling the Remote Cleaners at Fukushima

While 2011 was filled with dreary news of solar bankruptcies, electric car companies shutting their doors and U.S. politics demonizing clean power, I’ve been searching for untold stories of successful cleantech startups that have been flying under the radar. Here’s one that’s been at the top of my mind: nuclear waste cleanup startup Kurion.

The profitable four-year-old, 15-person, startup based in Irvine, Calif. won the mother of all nuclear clean up deals in 2011: Fukushima, one of the largest nuclear disasters in history. While Kurion’s CEO John Raymont wouldn’t comment on the financials of Kurion’s deal to help cleanup

Sampling of water in the spent fuel pool of Unit 4, Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station

Fukushima in an interview with me, the entire site will likely cost tens of billions of dollars over decades to be cleaned up by a variety of contractors and government workers.

This summer, about eight weeks after an earthquake and tsunami created the infamous events that led to the emissions of nuclear contaminants into the air and water at the Fukushima reactors, Kurion started shipping its nuclear water clean up technology to Japanese utility TEPCO.

Kurion was one of a group of companies selected by the beleaguered utility to clean the seawater that had been pumped into the reactors to cool them down. Others companies that made up the cleanup crew included France’s AREVA, Japan’s Toshiba and Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy; Kurion was the only startup included.

Nuclear waste to glass

Dispersing Dust Protectant, Common Pool Area

Kurion has developed a material it calls “ion specific media,” which basically soaks up nuclear particles and then shrinks the materials down to a small enough size so that it can be turned into glass, which is a process called vitrification>. It’s the standard process used by the nuclear industry to encapsulate waste, but Kurion has created a more modular process, so the clean-up technology can be quickly shipped to a contaminated site, then the waste can be safely shipped somewhere for storage.

Since the summer, Kurion’s technology has been used as part of what Raymont calls “an unprecedented external reactor water cooling system,” designed to replace the in-plant reactor

Sampling of water in the spent fuel pool of Unit 4, Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station

water cooling system that normally would purify and recycle reactor water to keep the reactor cool. The entire water cleaning system, which has cleaned and cooled some 50 million gallons of water at the site, includes an oil and debris removal system from Toshiba, the cesium removal system from Kurion, a decontamination system to polish the Kurion effluent from AREVA, and a desalinization system from Hitachi.

Until the nuclear cores of the reactors are removed, they’ll continue to discharge nuclear particles, so a water cooling and cleaning system will have to be in place for maybe a decade. TEPCO originally thought it would use the cleaning system from Kurion and the others only temporarily, but TEPCO has now decided to keep the temporary system in place for at least a year, and Kurion has a continuing contract to ship its materials and technology to TEPCO.

Future of Kurion

Having one of the world’s largest nuclear cleanups under its belt puts Kurion in a prime position. However, Fukushima wasn’t Kurion’s first cleanup deal; back in the day, the technology was used to help clean up the U.S.’s own Three Mile Island nuclear disaster. But the cleanup effort at Fukushima effort has been far faster and far larger (at least 100 times the amount of water was cleaned at Fukushima).

In 2012, Kurion plans to use its success to double its staff to at least 30 people, and is currently on a hiring spree. While Kurion has the backing of Lux Capital and Firelake Capital, it has raised only a small amount of money, and down the road could potentially be looking to raise more rounds.

This year, Kurion also plans to develop its vitrification (glass encapsulating) technology more — to become a one-stop nuclear waste clean up shop — and be able to go after any contract in the world, says Raymont. Basically, it wants to compete with the big guys, and instead of being the sole startup amongst the large public firms cleaning nuclear waste sites, it will eventually aim to get a bigger piece of the pie.

Images courtesy of TEPCO.

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Startup Kurion says Japan nuclear water cleanup is working

Katie Fehrenbacher — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 03:41:47 +0000

In June, a group of nuclear tech companies, including Silicon Valley startup Kurion, started cleaning the tens of millions of gallons of contaminated water at the Fukushima nuclear power plants in Japan. Now Kurion says the efforts are working, and cesium levels in the water have dropped by more than 40 percent.

Three-year-old Kurion makes a cleanup material (they call it ion specific media) that soaks up radioactive cesium and iodine in contaminated water and contains the waste by shrinking it down to a small-enough size, then turning it into glass, a process called vitrification. The company is backed by investors Lux Capital and Firelake Capital, and is the only American company and startup company to work on the Japanese cleanup efforts.

Vitrification is the standard way to cleanup cesium and iodine in nuclear-contaminated water, but Kurion says it makes that process cheaper, faster and more efficient. Often, the standard vitrification process requires the contaminated materials to be moved to a centralized plant, but Kurion’s process brings the technology to the contaminated materials.

Near of the Sea Water intake of Unit2 in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station

Kurion isn’t cleaning the some 90 million gallons of contaminated water on its own. Japanese conglomerates Hitachi and Toshiba, and French nuclear provider AREVA, are also helping to clean the some 90 million gallons. The water was pumped into the turbine buildings at the power plant and wasn’t only contaminated by nuclear materials, but also filled with debris, oil and salt (from seawater).

The group has been working in a haste to clean the massive amount of water. Kurion’s CEO John Raymont told me in an interview back in June that the rainy season just started in Japan, and if the contaminated water overflowed, it could damage the area’s environment even more. There’s also the concern that more earthquakes could occur in the area, which could also cause the water to overflow. Raymont told me that the startup delivered the cleanup material and technology to Japanese utility TEPCO in five weeks, which is a fraction of the time he says it took to start cleaning water at the Three Mile Island accident.

Nuclear waste management is a problem that hasn’t seen a whole lot of innovation over the past few decades. According to some estimates, $1 out of every $4 from the Department of Energy’s budget goes toward nuclear waste management, so there is a sizable opportunity to help the DOE cut that expense. And with the Japanese nuclear disaster, there’s an immediate market.

Images courtesy of Kurion, and TEPCO.

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Tech companies to begin cleaning water at Japan nuclear plants

Katie Fehrenbacher — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 07:00:11 +0000

Fixing the Grid at Fukushima

A group of nuclear tech companies are poised to begin cleaning the contaminated water in the turbine buildings at the Fukushima nuclear power plants in Japan that suffered damage in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami. Japanese conglomerates Hitachi and Toshiba, French nuclear provider AREVA, and Silicon Valley startup Kurion plan to start cleaning the massive amount of water — tens of millions of gallons — that have been pumped into the turbine buildings and has now been contaminated by nuclear materials, and is filled with debris, oil and salt (from seawater).

The group has been racing to officially start the cleansing process as soon as possible, hoping to officially begin at noon on Friday Japan time (8 p.m. Thursday night PDT). Speed is essential, because the rainy season just started in Japan, and if the contaminated water overflows, it could damage the area environmentally even more. There’s also the concern that more earthquakes could occur in the area, which could also cause the water to overflow. “We delivered the technology to TEPCO in five weeks, which is a fraction of the time it took to start cleaning water at Three Mile Island,” Kurion’s CEO John Raymont, told me in an interview.

Near of the Sea Water intake of Unit2 in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station

For three-year-old Kurion, working on TEPCO’s nuclear cleanup is a game-changing deal. The company, which is backed by Lux Capital, and Firelake Capital, is the only American company and the only startup tackling the problem. Kurion has already run two tests on the contaminated water at the Japanese nuclear plants using its cleanup material (they call it ion specific media). One test it ran on its own, and one in collaboration with the complete tech cleanup crew. The tests were successful, “met the criteria, the performance and the flow rates,” said Raymont.

Now the colossal process of cleaning some 90 million gallons will begin imminently. First Toshiba’s tech will remove the oil and debris, then Kurion’s material comes in and soaks up radioactive cesium and iodine and then AREVA’s technology soaks up radioactive strontium. Kurion’s “media” contains the radioactive waste, and shrinks it down to a small enough size so that it can be turned into glass, a process called vitrification. Vitrification permanently encapsulates the nuclear waste so it can be stored and transported more easily, and is the standard way that nuclear waste is dealt with.

Kurion’s business model is based on making vitrification modular, which makes it cheaper, faster and more efficient. Often, the standard vitrification process requires the contaminated materials to be moved to a centralized plant, but Kurion’s process brings the technology to the contaminated materials.

Nuclear waste management is a problem that hasn’t seen a whole lot of innovation over the past few decades. According to some estimates, $1 out of every $4 from the Department of Energy’s budget goes toward nuclear waste management, so there is a sizable opportunity to help the DOE cut that expense. Now with the Japanese nuclear disaster, there’s an immediate market.

Images courtesy of TEPCO.

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Startup Kurion Ships Nuclear Clean Up Tech to Japan

Katie Fehrenbacher — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 22:26:52 +0000

Dispersing Dust Protectant, Common Pool Area

Nuclear waste cleanup startup Kurion says it has shipped several hundred tons of its equipment that will be used to clean contaminated water at the Fukushima nuclear power plants in Japan that suffered damage in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami. Kurion says some of its engineers have already arrived at the Fukushima sites, and more will arrive over the next two weeks, and by June Kurion expects its radioactive water cleaning technology to be installed at the nuclear plants. We reported in April that Kurion was working on the Japanese nuclear disaster.

Kurion’s technology, and business plan, is to make the process of vitrification — turning nuclear waste into glass — modular, which makes it cheaper, faster and more efficient. Vitrification is the standard way to clean up nuclear waste, and Kurion essentially brings the technology to the waste tanks, instead of taking the waste to a massive centralized treatment plant.

Before Kurion turns the waste into glass, it uses a material to soak up the waste, which it calls “ion specific media,” and then shrinks the material down to a small enough size so that it can be turned into glass. Vitrification essentially permanently encapsulates the nuclear waste, and while it’s still radioactive, the waste can be stored and transported more easily.

Kurion says at the Fukushima plants, its technology will be used on radioactive contaminated water that is in the turbine buildings, as well as on new cooling water that is being added every day. Some of the more standard nuclear cleanup materials couldn’t be used because they don’t work with saltwater, and sea water was pumped into the Fukushima plants in order to cool the reactor in response to the disaster.

Kurion’s cleanup material has previously been used to clean up contaminated liquids at the Three Mile Island incident. But Kurion CEO John Raymont said in a statement that while the Three Mile Island clean up preparation process took 18 months, it only took five weeks to deliver the technology for the Fukushima project, due to developments in innovation and modularization. As an additional defense against radioactive waste at the Fukushima plants, Areva is also developing a second radioactive removal system that will be used, and both Toshiba and Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy are involved in the project, too.

Kurion is a three-year-old company based in Irvine, Calif. backed by Lux Capital and Firelake Capital. Kurion says it is the only American company working on this cleanup project. Kurion has completed other milestones over the past several months, including small scale testing of its technology, and has also moved into “a long series of tests on simulated waste streams.” In addition Kurion says it has a contract with engineering firm CH2MHill to test out its tech to manage uranium metal bearing sludges at a site in the U.S.

Nuclear waste management is a problem that hasn’t seen a whole lot of innovation over the past few decades — according to some estimates $1 out of every $4 from the Department of Energy’s budget goes toward nuclear waste management, so there is a sizable opportunity to help the DOE cut that expense. Now with the Japanese nuclear disaster, there is an immediate market.

Image courtesy of TEPCO (not Kurion’s tech).

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