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Mini Nuke Plants Will Power 20,000 Homes
They're the size of a hot tub. They're buried underground. They'll power 20,000 homes for 10 cents a watt anywhere in the world, at a start-up cost of $2,500 a house. They're 5 years away from mass production. They're miniature nuclear reactors delivered to your hood by truck and guaranteed to be factory-sealed, contain no weapons-grade material, have no moving parts, and be theft-proof because they'll will be encased in concrete and buried underground. And—get this—they'll be safe because they'll be guarded by a security detail.
Wow. I feel so much better already. TSA for garden nukes.
The Guardian reports the mini nuke plants were developed by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, daddies to the first atomic bomb. The US government has licensed the technology to the New Mexico company Hyperion, which said last week it's taken more than 100 firm orders, largely from the oil and electricity industries. Hyperion plans to start mass production within five years. They're also targeting (is that irony?) developing countries and isolated communities.
The first confirmed order is from a Czech company for a unit to be installed in Romania. Hyperion has a six-year waiting list and is in talks with developers in the Cayman Islands, Panama, and the Bahamas. The reactors need to be refueled about every seven to ten years and produce waste of about the size of a softball, says Hyperion, waste that's a good candidate for fuel recycling. Or what?
Surely there's a better way to solve our problems.
Meanwhile Toshiba is testing mini 200KW reactors measuring about 20 by 6 feet and designed to fuel fewer homes for longer, or a single building for up to 40 years. So Joe Six-Pack can have his own backyard nuke. Think of the DIY YouTube possibilities.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the PEN USA Literary Award, the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal.
Wow, what a great idea - I can see them going down a bomb in earthquake zones!
Here we go - it appears ideological ignorance is not only a Republican trait. Carbon ain't gonna go away without something to replace the electricity generation, unless you really think the vast majority of the worlds population really wants to turn into a bunch of hippies.
Is this really possible? A 3m diameter, 10 m long cylinder containing a 50 MWt nuclear reactor would have something like a ~500kW / m^2 heat flux at the surface, but this is passively cooled just by burying it?
I might be too skeptical, but that strikes me as an implausible claim.
You Americans think that you can get ahead of us French in the nuclear power field. We just laugh at you. No way. You are just jealous of our great Cheese and Wine. Everybody knows that we are number one when it comes to nuclear power. You Americans are so backward.
sheesh
tagged as:- result
What the hell is wrong with you? Cheese and wine have nothing to do with nuclear power and global warming. These issues should be discussed not under the context of what countries are good at it, but how they are needed in today's world and to achieve a better global future. Sheesh, I honestly hope not all French people are such cocky dumbasses. I don't know too many myself. On a side note, many of us under, let's say, 70, actually think your cheese tastes like shit and that your wine is nothing to scream about. Did you know that California wines are actually better than French ones? Just 'Google' information about the movie "Bottle Shock."
This would be the Canadian Slowpoke design from 1967. The Slowpoke III was specifically designed to provide heating water to a community.
Not a lot of them was sold because the Chinese made a knock off version and have been marketing that vigorously.
The Slowpoke series is the only design licensed for unattended operation by students.
If you want one, pick up the phone and order a Slowpoke, Slowpoke II, Slowpoke III or the updated Maple reactor from AECL. That way you won't have to spend so much trying to catch up to 40 year old technology.
The French tried to build a commercial submarine around the Slowpoke III but the deal fell apart due to a funding dispute between France and Canada, again the French just wanted to steal Canadian technology and have the Canadians fund it. The sub was actually built, just never fitted out with the reactor. Officially, it was supposed to be a co-operative effort between France and Canada but it seems like all the countries just want to fleece Canada. Great yacht for some billionaire.
Note that the Canadian nuclear technology is for civilian use only. Even the Candu reactor can run on natural uranium such that the spent fuel does not need any special storage as it would be less radioactive than the natural uranium was in the first place. The Candu reactor can also run on the spent fuel rods of other countries nuclear reactors.
John, you obviously have issues with Quebec. Get over it. We French consider Quebec to be a part of the greater France.
It's nuts.
First of all nothing we make is maintenance free. It's going to have problems.
Next, the idea that every problem has to have a multi-billion dollar solution 5-10 years from now is ridiculous.
Enough sunshine strikes the earth in 1 hour that could power the earth's entire electric needs for a year. Simple solution, decentralized. We have to quit looking at the next "great" scientific solution and start using available technology that is simple and safe.
Oh...and lest I forget, solar is the ultimate source of all power. It makes more sense to use it rather than burn finite resources like fossil fuels etc. We have to use Solar, Wind, Tidal resources.
Last point for those of you who say solar (again wind and tidal included) can't exist in the marketplace without subsidies. Wrong.
Solar subsidies exist to level the playing field. Take away the subsidies for oil, gas and nukes and all of a sudden solar technologies compete quite nicely. Add in the cost of our military to protect the flow of oil, insurance costs to protect the public from catastrophe, health care costs from burning fossil fuels and the contribution burning fossil fuels has on global warming and solar, wind tidal, etc are now the most cost effective energy sources we have.
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