Because early adopter venture capitalists soured on the idea after losing beaucoup bucks invested in boatcar/carboat. The Amphicar!.
Posted on 01/22/2020 1:14:26 PM PST by Red Badger
Submarines have the entire ocean to use for the coolant cycle, which allows for the much smaller footprint. The primary function of an atomic pile is to produce heat energy, which is then used to drive some kind of reciprocating or rotating motion, to spool up dynamos which then power the more efficient electric motors to be used to turn the propellers on the final drive. Steam is often the medium used to carry the energy to the mechanism, be it a turbine, or a swashplate, or even an older design of a reciprocating piston-driven multi-cylinder engine. It is a matter of harnessing the heat energy for the most efficient means of recovering the maximum that can be extracted before releasing the excess heat to the environment.
Thorium-fueled Molten Salt reactors are an even more adaptable design that is highly scalable, and which produce virtually no long-lived isotopes as a result of operation, and are inherently impossible to fail due to a runaway reaction and overheating, causing the “China Syndrome”, which was always a possibility with the older uranium-fueled Light Water reactors.
Nice. (grins)
What’s the fuel? Thorium?
5.56mm
Nope. What really killed the nuke industry was the giant bear paw rammed up the ass of the f'n anti-nuclear movement. The Soviets crippled the nuclear industry in the USA as a strategic measure and did it by pouring money into the protest organizations and their disinformation campaigns and tortious interference.
Thorium, plutonium, uranium, banana peels................
Pipes of Color is so millennial.
Because early adopter venture capitalists soured on the idea after losing beaucoup bucks invested in boatcar/carboat. The Amphicar!.
Chernobyl was an open air reactor. It did not have a pressurized containment vessel. It failed in part to poor design but largely due to incompetence and stupidity.
/thread hijack
Well actually it a was combination of both. I’ll leave the distribution of blame up to you.
“banana peels”
The Delorean?
5.56mm
Graphene nanotubes are the key, don’tcha know?
I’m stealing that
“the machinery always seems to wind up under the control of idiots.”
Really? There are over 400 operating nuclear power plants in the world. How many serious accidents have there been in the last 50 years? It’s safest method of power generation in the world.
You can’t overcome the human factor here.
Back at the time of the Three Mile Island accident, a TVA spokesman sought to reassure citizens about the safety of their plant, stating that each and everyone of their techs was a high school graduate.
IIRC I did a spit take upon hearing that....huh, just wondered ifvthe writers of The Simpsons based Homer's job on that news item.
Jay Leno has one of those beasts in a road car.
It sounds like RR is heading in the right direction. As an architect, I have been waiting for someone to come up with a reactor the size of a 50 gallon hot water heater with fissionable material the equivalent of a ping pong ball running a closed loop steam turbine to produce enough electricity to light and heat a standard 2500 SF home. These units would last 99 years and be encased in lead and concrete in the back yard. No more electric bills.
we put them in submarines dont we ??
—
So true
“It just needs some engineering work.”
I think larger power plants supplying a large area will always be a more efficient scheme than a bunch of smaller ones.
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