An unused Cold War-era generator has left Oak Ridge on a new mission: bring power to the most remote places on earth and the dark side of the moon.
Zeno Power joined forces with the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management and its cleanup contractor United Cleanup Oak Ridge (UCOR) to transfer a radioisotope generator called the BUP-500, the largest of its kind ever made, which had been sitting at Oak Ridge National Laboratory since the mid-1980s.
Zeno Power, a startup founded by three Vanderbilt students in 2018, plans to use the radioactive fuel from the generator to develop a new kind of power generator for customers like the Department of Defense and NASA. The partnership was announced Jan. 26 at UCOR headquarters in Oak Ridge.
Tyler Bernstein, co-founder and CEO of Zeno Power, said he hoped the partnership with the Department of Energy would set a precedent for how private companies can work with the U.S. government to turn waste into clean energy.
“I can only imagine how exciting it’s going to be when this fuel that has now left the state will be deployed in the oceans, in space, enabling a next generation of scientific and national security missions,” Bernstein said.