Doc already did it.
I only have one house, perhaps they could scale it down?
Heat only and an absorption unit for AC.
Would this be enough to light and power a large cave, like Carlsbad Caverns?
Soooo...no need for electric car charging stations?
You know, it’s interesting to read popular science stuff in the immediate days post-WW2. Following Hiroshima/Nagasaki, there was a lot of optimism about nuclear power, and a fair number of scientists talked about the technology being scaled down for personal use in powering homes, motor vehicles, etc. Obviously, that never happened, but it likely could have happened if there had been sufficient efforts in that direction.
finally, you can have a Ford Lightning with some towing range
This is the very first mention I have seen of LWR since George Webb reported on them this summer from Geneva.
Doc already did it.
You could sell energy to all your neighbors and get rich, rich, RICH!!!
Ok, now I know what to carry in the back of my Telsa CyperTruck to over come range anxiety.....
I’m still waiting for the jet pack to go with it.
We did try the whole sodium cooling idea in the first SEAWOLF back in the 50’s. It worked but the salt was a total paininthebutt. We cut the reactor section out, canned it, then sunk it in a really deep place. The only successful smaller reactor was Rickover’s NR-1. And it takes a certain weight of uranium to go critical in the first place which limits how small a reactor vessel can be. Maybe the BYU kids have found a way to make a chunk of fuel get warm then just die of old age?
I had a safe micro-nuclear reactor once.
Liquid sodium reactors are not new. In this case the size of them is, but they’re not new. They’ve been playing around with them since the ‘50s.
CC
I’ve been arguing for this type of solution for years.
The researchers at BYU seem to have solved the problem of “small”. This is a huge step forward. Rather than producing nuclear energy at a massive scale with all the concomitant problems, one of these types of reactors would be capable of powering a residential block. Or at an even smaller scale - think the size of your hot water heater buried in the back yard - it could easily power a 3,000 SF home for a hundred years.
At some point, they could be powering your EV.
It’s really too bad that I won’t live long enough to see this type of energy production on a competitive scale in what is left of my lifetime.
Yeah, a thorium microreactor about the suze if a softball could power both a home and bevy of vehicles without lithium batteries.
Problem is, the grid and its utility plants go bye-bye and that brings nasty politics and BS scare tactics.
For example, a probable nightly news narrative could be:
“We report tonight that the new affordable thorium micronuclear power pads are toxic to your family pets!”
Then watch sales plummet.
Work good on trains too.
These need to be the sources of energy for fast-charging stations.
When not charging cars, feed energy back into the grid.
The BYU scientist’s molten salt nuclear micro-reactor would measure 4 ft x 7ft. What’s more, as there’s no risk of a meltdown, there is no need for a large exclusion zone. According to the research team, their micro-reactor can produce enough energy to power 1,000 typical homes in the U.S.
“The micro-reactor can also fit onto a 40-foot truck bed”
~~~~~~~
Finally! An Electric Truck worth having!
Will power your EV when the electric grid fails.
But Solar is FREE!! (/S)