Posted on 12/18/2007 9:44:50 PM PST by HAL9000
Toshiba has developed a new class of micro size Nuclear Reactors that is designed to power individual apartment buildings or city blocks. The new reactor, which is only 20 feet by 6 feet, could change everything for small remote communities, small businesses or even a group of neighbors who are fed up with the power companies and want more control over their energy needs.The 200 kilowatt Toshiba designed reactor is engineered to be fail-safe and totally automatic and will not overheat. Unlike traditional nuclear reactors the new micro reactor uses no control rods to initiate the reaction. The new revolutionary technology uses reservoirs of liquid lithium-6, an isotope that is effective at absorbing neutrons. The Lithium-6 reservoirs are connected to a vertical tube that fits into the reactor core. The whole whole process is self sustaining and can last for up to 40 years, producing electricity for only 5 cents per kilowatt hour, about half the cost of grid energy.
Toshiba expects to install the first reactor in Japan in 2008 and to begin marketing the new system in Europe and America in 2009.
You aren't factoring in the time cost of money.
This thing produces $10/hour of electricity, or $240/day or $87,600 a year. With a 10% interest rate, the present value of that cash flow is about $860,000. At 7%, it goes to about $1,170,000. That's still not cheap for any vacation home except maybe Ted Turner.
of course, using it for point power means you aren't going to be running at full load all the time. So, at half load, the price/kwh (assuming most of the cost of the plant is capital, not fuel) would go to about 10 cents/kwh.
200 kilowatt Toshiba designed reactorSeems a little small, but hey, if it can result in a huge expensive environmental cleanup when the lithium leaks out, I'm all for it. /sarc
Toshiba, NEC Electronics to team up on 32-nm chips
Reuters | Tuesday, November 27, 2007 | Mayumi Negishi
Posted on 12/06/2007 10:59:31 AM EST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1935636/posts
“Assuming the power output remains the same over the stated lifetime, and at the per unit energy price quoted, the unit is worth $3.5 million.”
Can you tell me how many sf of typical office space 200 kw would support?
thanks.
It would make the national infrastructure incredibly robust. If done right it would make entire communities self sufficient in terms of sanitation, water processing, ad even food. In the case of a nuclear attack, we wouldn't’t see the wide spread disease, starvation, and civil carnage we will now see with centralized power production.
Power production, if managed right, is the key to clean water and food production in urban areas.
Gimme a neutron source ( or a few ) and I’ll give you plutonium and, with the plans already provided by China, and a bit of Semtex, make it into a nuclear explosive.
“Hello, this is Bin L... errr Peace and Love construction. We are building a set of luxury caverns in nowheristan. Please send us 10 of your new microreactors. Enclosed is a check for $15,000,000”
And yet Congress thinks it can legislate energy policies...
Michale Crighton gives gives the number as 4000
However, since folks are living in Hiroshima and Nagasaki now, I think your worries about"uninhabitable for the foreseeable future" are overblown.
However, it could be robust. I do doubt that more than a few politicians have the foresight to keep an expensive interconnect network up and running from one hurricane season to the next.
It could help in rural areas, if it eliminated the connection to the larger network. It might be cheaper to put up two of these, than have a 100 mile transmission line.
I don't think there's a clear answer to how to use these until some engineering groups runs the numbers on total cost of ownership.
Personally, I'd vote against these unless they were run on some fuel that doesn't generate bomb material. Once upon a time I read an article or book talking about a thorium cycle reactor that had such a benefit. Sorry, but I haven't been able to track down the reference recently.
I was simply trying to get an estimate of what one of these units would cost. Very true that I did not include the cost of money over time. It is hard to know if the fuel consumption is constant regardless of load. In other words if you only used half the capacity would it last twice (or any) longer?
Ironically, the Chernobyl event itself, and other research, have lead toxicologists to drop that theory. It is illogical on the face of it to apply 6-order-of-magnitude extrapolations to biological systems, but that's what the theory does.
The previously unknown existence of DNA repair mechanisms means that multiple simultaneous hits on the same strand must happen for a mutation to occur, and of course most mutations are either harmless (most DNA is non-functional) or kills the cell without spreading. Also, a human being experiences something like 50,000 DNA Single Nucleotide Polymorhphism (SNP) mutations (think of it as a single corrupted bit) PER SECOND. Obviously at some level, radiation damage is swamped by this natural background.
Unfortunately, others, including, of course, envirwhackos, hold to the old theory.
Chrichton's estimate is probably high but is way below the 100,000 or so predicted by the old theory.
Also, the "uninhabitable" zone is only uninhabitable to those humans who both believe the old theory, and fear a one-chance-in-a-million (or so) increased chance of cancer. In other words, most of it is great real-estate. Detailed studies of animals in the area show no deleterious effects from the current levels of radiation except in the highest dosage areas right next to the plant. The number of heritable mutations is not increased.
Finally, the idea that radiation results in heritable mutations is a bit weak. The dosages necessary to cause a significant likelihood of such mutations are high enough to definitely cause radiation sickness (100REM in small time period), as opposed to the milliREM levels people are scared to death of.
Hard to beat that if you try!
Do you have any links for further info on these engines? I’d be curious to see that.
In general, yes. That's how it works for the larger nukes. However, that's only the cost of the fuel, not the capital cost. I very much doubt that one fuel load is going to last the 40 years quoted in the article. I think the 40 years is the life of the unit. If it's priced like larger units, running it at half load doesn't save enough on fuel to make a difference to total cost
The price of nuke fuel is the lowest $/BTU option, which is why any utility with a nuke plant tries to keep it running at full load all the time.
The article would have to talk a lot more about the trade off between capital cost and fuel costs to know how to be most economical with one of these plants. My guess is that Toshiba would like to go to the model of the inkjet printer - sell the plant as cheap as possible, and the fuel as expensive as possible, which is the opposite from the economics of the larger nukes.
I’ve never read up on them on the web. However, my prof said they produced a tremendous amount of thrust.
Interestingly one of his pals, I also did work for, was a pilot of a plane at INEL that supposedly tested airborne reactors.
Here is a depiction of the full plant; if you look at the light blue vertical canister at the left side -- that is the 20 foot by 6 foot reactor. The rest of the building around it has the generators, control, and transmission network to be able to use the reactor; not something that will fit in your basement.
As to Chernobyl, go check out KIDDofSPEED ^ -- Elena has a multi-page site with descriptions and lots of photos as she rode through the area; a very interesting story.
read you stories
thanks for writing them.
(thought the green M&M stunt was neat)
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