The portable nuclear reactor is the size of a hot tub. It’s shaped like a sake cup, filled with a uranium hydride core and surrounded by a hydrogen atmosphere. Encase it in concrete, truck it to a site, bury it underground, hook it up to a steam turbine and, voila, one would generate enough electricity to power a 25,000-home community for at least five years.
I was gonna do the whole "we're saved now" sarcasm piece, but it got pretty old, so... whatever. Let's see what kind of market we've got for these babies. Who wants nukes in their backyard?
Joined: Apr 28, 2005 Posts: 3625 Location: West shore Lake Eire, MI, USA
Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 7:37 pm Post subject: Re: The backyard nuclear generator
Mahmoud wrote:
Is it possible to bury this deep enough so that its impervious to bomb atacks?
Nope, if you can dig a hole to put something there someone else can drop a penetrating bomb and blow it up. _________________ Oxygen: - An intensely habit-forming accumulative toxic substance. As little
as one breath is known to produce a life-long addiction to the gas, which addiction invariably ends in death.--Isaac Asimov
Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 8:17 pm Post subject: Re: The backyard nuclear generator
Tanada wrote:
Mahmoud wrote:
Is it possible to bury this deep enough so that its impervious to bomb atacks?
Nope, if you can dig a hole to put something there someone else can drop a penetrating bomb and blow it up.
Not quite a backyard reactor. The idea using smaller town or village scale power plants for combined heat and power has been on the cards for decades. It is only recently that economic designs have started to appear.
The reactor itself would be several metres underground, under a sealed concrete building. Only the coolant system would be vulnerable to attack. In the event of a loss of all cooling and a meltdown, the inventory would be contained.
A very small reactor has a much smaller inventory of radioactive nasties than giant ones like Chernobyl and TMI. Generally, if the thing does go pop, the consequences are much smaller, more localised and easier to deal with. It is also easier to cool the core using natural heat loss, bringing down the risk of decayheat temperature excursion faults (meltdown). Given that total consequences of accident are much lower, you can have a larger number of reactors for no more and possibly even less accident risk.
Of course there is always the risk that a lunatic would attempt to blow these things up. But in terms of direct casualties, the same lunatic could probably inflict more damage by detonating their bomb in a crowded shopping centre. Of course an attack on even a small nuclear plant would generate a lot more fear, public panic and political 'fallout' even if, in the real world, the consequences weren't that severe.
In one respect, multiple small units have an advantage over large ones; they can be produced in their thousands and this would tend to bring prices down through scale economies. They can also be used to provide district heating, making them far more energy efficient than large plants.
Joined: Apr 28, 2005 Posts: 3625 Location: West shore Lake Eire, MI, USA
Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 8:34 pm Post subject: Re: The backyard nuclear generator
Sideous wrote:
Tanada wrote:
Mahmoud wrote:
Is it possible to bury this deep enough so that its impervious to bomb atacks?
Nope, if you can dig a hole to put something there someone else can drop a penetrating bomb and blow it up.
The reactor itself would be several metres underground, under a sealed concrete building. Only the coolant system would be vulnerable to attack. In the event of a loss of all cooling and a meltdown, the inventory would be contained.
Of course there is always the risk that a lunatic would attempt to blow these things up. But in terms of direct casualties, the same lunatic could probably inflict more damage by detonating their bomb in a crowded shopping centre. Of course an attack on even a small nuclear plant would generate a lot more fear, public panic and political 'fallout' even if, in the real world, the consequences weren't that severe.
I didn't say anything about nutcases or terrorists, I was talking about penetrating military munitions designed to destroy buried instalations. _________________ Oxygen: - An intensely habit-forming accumulative toxic substance. As little
as one breath is known to produce a life-long addiction to the gas, which addiction invariably ends in death.--Isaac Asimov
Joined: May 24, 2004 Posts: 3429 Location: California, USA
Posted: Tue Nov 27, 2007 8:37 am Post subject: Re: The backyard nuclear generator
Yo Moderators, let's merge this topic with the other topic on the same subject.
---
Re. penetrating munitions and so on: there are far more "productive" targets to hit, if one's intention is to cause civilian casualties. Chemical plants and their associated storage facilities, and sewage treatment plants, and water treatment & pumping stations for large cities, come to mind.
---
Sideous is right on target about the technical details.
Except for one thing: I think these are melt-proof. IF they are assembled at the factory and delivered ready to hook up to a water/steam line, then pretty clearly they must use an intrinsically safe design because they are running at partial power as soon as they are assembled. Realistically they are probably not "switched on" until they are installed, but just the same, the absence of the usual coolant backup systems indicates to me that the design is highly tolerant. At worst, an operating accident would result in an internally-damaged unit that would have to go back to the factory for repair.
District heating would be a fantastic side benefit.
Think of this, folks: You have all the electricity you want, your house is cozy warm in the winter and air conditioned in the summer, and not even a puff of CO2 emitted along the way. The power units are decentralized and networked to provide a 100% reliable local grid. They make the perfect baseload power supply to enable using as much wind and solar power as you can get in the area, thereby stretching the life of the nuclear fuel by at least a factor of two.
I'd say, rather than burying them under the ground, install them under small concrete domes to simplify routine service such as fuel replacement.
25 megawatts probably translates to an initial cost of $50 million for a complete installation. This is well within the reach of venture capital. Unlike the larger conventional reactors, these things could be built by small investor groups.
Dammit I want to see these all over Northern California.
Joined: Apr 06, 2006 Posts: 3330 Location: 3 miles NW of Champoeg, Republic of Cascadia
Posted: Tue Nov 27, 2007 9:59 am Post subject: Re: The backyard nuclear generator
They need to hire a more articulate mouthpiece, though:
Quote:
“In fact, we prefer to call it a ‘drive’ or a ‘battery’ or a ‘module’ in that it’s so safe,” Hyperion spokeswoman Deborah Blackwell says. “Like you don’t open a double-A battery, you just plug [the reactor] in and it does its chemical thing inside of it. You don’t ever open it or mess with it.”
"Do the Chemical Thing." Sounds like something you'd hear on a dance floor in 1985.
There's also the criticism of the process as "loony."
I'm very keen as well on the idea of localized nuclear power like this or the SSTAR. It'd get around most of the very obvious caveats about nuclear.
Sci Fi writers used to include a "nuclear pile" in their descriptions of space ships and flying cars, I guess named after the Chicago Pile-1. People have been snickering about that for a long time, be funny if they got the last laugh.
Nothing about proliferation issues. What can you do with "uranium crystals" bombwise? _________________ Cogito, ergo non satis bibivi
I will not abide another toe.
Joined: Sep 16, 2004 Posts: 4409 Location: Southwest WI
Posted: Tue Nov 27, 2007 10:37 am Post subject: Re: The backyard nuclear generator
I believe Toshiba has talked about putting something like this in the ground in Alaska for YEARS. Still hasn't gone anywhere. I think it sounds awesome, but until i see them being dropped in the ground on CNN, i'm skeptical. _________________ "Oil is going up because we use too much oil, and the capacity to replace reserves is dwindling"
-President Bush 11/07/07
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