Posted on 11/08/2008 11:25:39 PM PST by Enchante
Nuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000 homes will be on sale within five years, say scientists at Los Alamos, the US government laboratory which developed the first atomic bomb.
The miniature reactors will be factory-sealed, contain no weapons-grade material, have no moving parts and will be nearly impossible to steal because they will be encased in concrete and buried underground.
The US government has licensed the technology to Hyperion, a New Mexico-based company which said last week that it has taken its first firm orders and plans to start mass production within five years. 'Our goal is to generate electricity for 10 cents a watt anywhere in the world,' said John Deal, chief executive of Hyperion. 'They will cost approximately $25m [£13m] each. For a community with 10,000 households, that is a very affordable $250 per home.'
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Unless some glaring obstacles are not being mentioned this sounds like a “no-brainer”..... why should we not get such plants installed widely?
I wonder if these are Pebble Bed reactors?
And who runs/maintains them?
I’m still waiting for my personal flying car.
If they are buried “encased in concrete” then it sounds like they are not supposed to need short-term maintenance. We don’t yet know the details, but from the article is sounds like they don’t have human operators except when fuel is changed out ever 7-10 years.
why should we not get such plants installed widely?....About five years ago i mentioned this (nuke power plant the size of a submarine reactor which have been in use for years) at an energy symposium and was widely excoriated by politicians and energy executives at the forum and in the local paper. I knew it was a direct hit, could be done very cheaply and would solve many problems.
One of these could turn an ordinary ship into a nuclear powered ship very easily....cool!
It doesn’t sound like they require any on-site staff. The units are described as like a “battery” the size of a hot tub that is buried encased in concrete and not disturbed until it is time to change fuel after 7-10 years. I don’t know if they are really close to production or if they are all that is claimed, but the project sure sounds interesting:
http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/
Wonderful idea but does anyone really think it could ever happen in this country as long as there is one dem judge left or a dem senator to filibuster it ? No freakin way.
The environmentalists will freak out and if we solved the energy problem the dems would lose an issue to demonize repubs with. They’d never go for this.
http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/
Actually there's damn little hard info available on their site. One strange clue is their statement, "The waste produced after five years of operation is approximately the size of a softball and is a good candidate for fuel recycling.:, implying a five usable life cycle.
It is $2,500 per household, NOT the $250 stated in the article. Having said that, it looks like a bargain, until it gets loaded up with featherbed union and/or government employees with guaranteed retirement at age 50 with 75% pay, free health care, etc.
The environmental enthusiasts in my neighborhood claim that for around $25,000 they can install solar electric on their roofs and avoid monthly bills—even sell some joice to the public utility.
So if these figures are anywhere close, nukes appear a good bargain.
From the US site on this project
http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/
And in other news NuScale offers a like product (at least on paper)
http://www.nuscalepower.com/
NuScale has teamed with Kiewit Sons who has built at least one small nuke plant - in all places, Alaska.
Peter Kiewit Sons’ Construction Company was the prime contractor for the construction of SM-1A, a 4 MWe nuclear plant at Fort Greely Alaska for the US Army. That contract was awarded in April, 1958.
The fact that the site, where the reactor is entombed and the site “remidiated” still produces measuralble radioactive water is just a bonus - one that keeps giving even 50+ years later.
see http://www.dec.state.ak.us/spar/csp/search/IC_Tracking/Site_Report.aspx?Hazard_ID=1706 for more on the SoA take.
1958 - small nuke power was a promise unfulfilled.
2008 - a nightmare or still just a promise?
Me? I’m holding out for an anri-matter battery the size of a small car that will deliver MWe of power....but then I am a fan of Sci-Fi as well.
No, that is still $2.5 million per household after the greenies sue every community they are put in, and the extra expenses of the various various regulations the governments (local, state, and fed puts on each reactor.
So no different from right now.
re: $2,500 per household
Good catch, I should have checked the arithmetic! I thought that $250 per household sounded way too good to be true....
Still, when costs of installing and operating large coal, gas, or nuclear plants are compared with this, it should still be a good deal, IF all the technical and logistical issues really are worked out.
Heck, I would just love to see the $2.95 x-ray glasses I used to see in comic books.
Some bullet points from Hyperion’s website (again, I cannot vouch for anything but it does sound promising if it’s not all hype):
Sealed module, never opened on site
Enough power for 5+ years
After 5 years, removed & refueled at original factory
Uniquely safe, self-moderating using a natural chemical reaction discovered 50 years ago
No mechanical parts in the core to malfunction
Water not used as coolant; cannot go “supercritical” or get too hot
No greenhouse gases or global warming emissions
Think: Large Battery!
Both had said that it is not the safety and cost of the unit, just the expense of getting it past the enviro weenies and governments at all levels.
Oh and I live in PA also. Right across the river SW from HBG.
“One of these could turn an ordinary ship into a nuclear powered ship very easily....cool”
That would be cool except for the weight and heat.
Exactly right! Maybe not that small but the potential has been there for years. It has always been the greenies and the left wing government wackos that have kept us paying huge unnecessary electric bills.
“Still, when costs of installing and operating large coal, gas, or nuclear plants are compared with this, it should still be a good deal, IF all the technical and logistical issues really are worked out.”
I believe the catch is it will cost $1,000,000 per household to go through the environmental impact analysis, once the lawyers and environmentalists get wind of the fact these plants could be safe and economic.
On a larger scale, a firm I worked for 20 years ago was involved with developing standard nuke plant designs, intended to be used for fast-track in multiple locations.
IOW the plants themselves would all be approved with a standard design, suitable for use in many types of locations, thereby reducing the approval cycle.
Unlikely to happen, but a smart approach. Probably what they have done in Europe for 40+ years. France gets 70% of their electricity from nukes.
We should go this way, saving natural gas for chemicals, fertilizers, etc.
And of course drill for oil, for personal transportation. I would love to buy a modern turbo-diesel electric hybrid, midsized station wagon, awd, 0 to 60 mph in 6 seconds, 50+ mpg.
Probably will come from BMW or Audi in a few years. They will have 250 to 300 total hp, 300 to 450 lb. ft. torque.
No, a good deal, IF all the legal issues can EVER be worked out. The greenies would never let this happen on U.S. soil. And some liberal judgeS would block any from getting past the 300 different environmental impact studies.
I heard about these some time ago. They are ready to go but they are going to have to overcome a lot of Government obstacles and some city somewhere is going to have to be the pioneer or lab rat, depending upon your perspective.
It would have been nice if there had been a schematic to go along with the article. I have seen these before and Toshiba has an even smaller one and if I remember correctly, they are pebble beds. They are sealed but I still believe that it was stated when I first heard of them that it required two people to run it.
Sealed in concrete. No operator required.
I’m Billy Blaze! I’m an idea guy!
Nuclear powered propeller aircraft here we come.
Engine nacelle for comparison
So ... 25MWe .... 10,000 homes. 25 million dollars divided 10,000 ways over 5 years.
Basically your electric bills are about 42 bucks a month. Figure 60 with interest, installation, replacement charges and loan crap.
No, not a great deal of information. Toshiba was supposed to have a trial run and some small town in Alaska was going to test it. The only problem I can see with it is overcoming all the government obstacles, changing public perception so they do not panic at the mere mention of “nuclear” and the liquid sodium. I believe they use double tube liquid sodium for cooling and that concerns me a bit. It sounds promising but until someone takes a chance we are never going to have the data we need to determine if this is truly viable, and more importantly, safe.
Why were you widely excoriated?
I think where they are getting the $250 per household is the $2500 per house divided by the reactor life span (10 yrs) which would be to the equivelant of $250 per house each year. Not sure just throwing it out there. Some articles do have misprinted info as seen from the election.
Not sure what they're measuring here, but I pay about 8 cents for a kilowatt-hour now. That's 1000 watts for an hour.
I suppose they could be talking about the installed cost per watt capacity, but as stated, it's unclear.
If our benevolent alien overlords really wanted to help us, they would give us their working matter/anti-matter warp core, I don’t know if I want to wait for Zefram Cochrane to invent it.
Screw nuclear, I want warp drive.
According to the site, the entire concrete-encased module is the size of a hot-tub and can be shipped by truck. It’s about 5 feet diameter and 20 feet long.
Compared to the weight of the fuel-oil or diesel the ship is carrying with it now, and the diesel engines turning the generators, the weight of one of these would be negligible.
I’m not certain a single 25MWe module would be enough for many ships, though. That is only about 35,000HP and large cruise ships need more than that. The Queen Mary 2, released in 2004, uses four 21.5MWe electric propulsion units and get their electricity from 157,000 HP diesel engines (combined) driving generators.
The electric companies would lose their investments and profits and the politicians would lose their power and campaign donations from the power companies, from what I understood. They didn’t say it exactly so, but I could read it from their derision.
Many of those who told me I was unrealistic, insane and needed a reality check are neighbors of yours over in the Capitol Complex.
“Sealed in concrete. No operator required.”
A little misleading. The “no moving parts” claim refers to the lack of need any mechanism to insert moderator material to adjust the temperature via reaction speed. The buried unit is simply a heat source, with the heat output piped to a standard steam turbine generator aboveground, and that still needs monitoring. In addition, the website says there would be guards onsite to prevent tampering or theft of the low-grade uranium hydride material.
I wish they wouldn’t use the word “battery” since that implies something that puts out electricity directly from tranfer of ions between chemicals.
This is nothing like that. It is simply a sealed heat source where the heat comes from a long-running nuclear reaction. That heat still needs to be used to turn water into steam and drive a turbine and generator to produce electricity.
I’m not sure people are ever going to trust that the containment unit with its radioactive material could survive a crash from 40,000 feet. Such a crash could scatter radioactive material over miles of ground.
And how many nuclear weapons did we have flying around in bombers from the 50's through the 90's?
And those were carrying weapons grade nuclear materials as well.
Actually, the most intriguing aspect is that power generation could be distributed.
Rather than relying on a finely balanced electric grid spanning the whole continent, you could break the grid down into blocks of 20,000 homes each.
The last estimate I saw about infrastructure improvements included almost a trillion dollars needed to revamp the existing electric grid. That wouldn’t be necessary if the grid itself wasn’t necessary anymore because power generation was distributed rather than concentrated into huge plants.
Good point. But the peaceniks weren’t exactly happy about that. And those bombers weren’t in the air all the time. They would only go up with nukes loaded if we hit DefCon4, or something.
Well, I doubt Obama is going to be any more reasonable about releasing any of the alien technology still held at Area51 than any other President of the last 50 years.
Sure he’ll be more reasonable, he’ll give it to our enemies just like the Clintons did with the ChiComs.
They don’t call him ‘Comrade’ 0bama for nothing.
That has nothing to do with the process of generating electricity and everything to do with trying to keep the natives from screwing with it. Technology that requires Fort Knox security isn't going mainstream.
Judging from the description in the Guardian article, the answer has to be no.
The Guardian descibes a reactor the size of a tool shed, self regulating, buried underground and not requiring a fuel swap-out before 7 years or so. It is designed for local generation, probably connected to the grid for purposes of selling electricity excess to local requirements and buying peak demand electricity.
The Pebble Bed reactor as designed for South Africa uses a pressure vessel about 80 feet high and twenty feet in diameter. A single reactor with its associated control building would occupy land approximately the size of a football pitch. A reactor park consisting of about 10 reactors and a single control building would take up about three football pitches.
Whereas the reactor in the Guardian article goes 7 years without refuelling, the pebble bed reactor has a continuous refuelling process. The fuel and moderators in the vessel are about 440,000 spheres, each about the size of a tennis ball, 3/4 of which are radioactive material encased in a graphite shell and the remainder are graphite spheres. The spheres are continuously being removed from the bottom of the vessel and tested to see if they are spent. Unspent spheres and graphite spheres are returned to the vessel and the spent fuel spheres are sent to spent fuel storage and are replaced with fresh ones, all on line while the reactor is continually running. Note that the reactor does not get shut down periodically for a fuel swap-out as is the case with current conventional reactors.
The heat exchanger is helium, a chemically inert gas.
the pebble bed reactor is obviously intended to be a main generating station directly powering the grid instead of being a local co-generating station.
Toshiba is already doing this. http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/19/toshibas-building-a-micro-nuclear-reactor-for-your-garage/
Interesting photo. If this is the case you could really modify life in the coastal desert areas (Arabia, Spanish Sahara, etc.) and make those places much better to live in. It might also give the Saudi’s some respite in their incessant need to distill water with natural gas.
Well this should make putting the DIRT in dirty bomb much easier.
Sounds good.
However having a nuke power plant in your yard might be kind of dangerous. Those envirowhackos might burn your house down.
“The environmental enthusiasts in my neighborhood claim that for around $25,000 they can install solar electric on their roofs and avoid monthly bills—even sell some joice to the public utility.”
I was listening to a guy on the radio last night talking about how much petroleum is used in the manufacture of solar cells from the machinery used to dig the silica sand to the trucks the deliver them. The hippies don’t think about much about that. Plus the fact that by the time they’ve been amortized it’s time to replace them.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.