The rest of y'all:
Yes, I still want one of these.
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.
> 5 cents per kilowatt hour, at 200kw is 100 bucks an hour, 2400 bucks a day.
Actually, you are off by a factor of ten here. 0.05 * 200 = 10 dollars an hour. Which implies 3.5 million dollars worth of electricity over 40 years.
Even if it only costs them $25,000 a year to hire someone to watch the reactor 42 hours each week, they would need to spend $4 million over those 40 years just to provide a single on-site employee 24 hours each day.
In theory, it might be possible to bury this micro-reactor deep enough that it would require no on-site security, but I wouldn’t want to bet my life on it.
Right not some flea bitten, stinking, western-educated, al-Qaeda scientist in the tribal areas of Pakistan is trying to get enough data to figure out how you can make a Toshiba lithium-6 powered nuclear reactor explode on command.
Swell.
Yeah doesn’t the Navy have a reactor design that’s only about 20 x 15 x 40? I may be wrong about the precise dimensions, but the thing I saw fit pretty handily on the back of a flat bed tractor trailer.Of course that might not have been the whole thing, (maybe it was in two or ten different parts and assembled later, but the story I was given at the time was that it was for powering a nuclear frigate.
Wal-Mart and Best Buy were completely sold out when I called. My son will have to wait.
I think the crew, three or four of them died on scene. One was missing, until somebody noticed a body impaled at the top on a control rod that was pushed against the ceiling.
If I recall correctly, that weren't no accident. Three technicians on duty, two guys one gal, two were married, the other .... well anyhow, it appeared to be a murder-suicide.
The rest of y'all:
Yes, I still want one of these.
PING.. Check out equity.
“Assuming it can’t dangerously malfunction, the real question is what can people who are bent on doing harm do with it?”
We can’t run away in fear from new technology. Look what 19 people did with box cutters.
What the manufacturers could do is build in communication technology that contacts authorities with GPS location if any tampering occurs.
With a polling communication contact system with the units, any non responsive unit is investigated quickly.
Check this out.
2 protoypes. My thesis adviser was on the team that developed them. They worked very well.
Well said. There are far more dangerous uses for plastic explosives than trying to crack open a reactor.
People are far more frightened of Nuclear stuff than they need to be - and its all the fault of the left.
Chernobyl killed, at most, 500 people - and that's counting all early deaths from the poorly protected cleanup crew. A mini-Chernobyl would be 1/1000 of this, or one half-dead person.
I can live with those odds.
Unless you own an apartment building, I don't think it's for individual units.
>> A suitcase full of plastic explosive shaped charges would turn this $3million reactor into a mini-Chernobyl.
> Chernobyl killed, at most, 500 people
...
> A mini-Chernobyl would be 1/1000 of this, or one half-dead person.
Chernobyl was a reactor test gone wrong, which resulted in a large fire spreading most of the core, including tons of uranuium, plutonium, and fission products, into the atmosphere. This contaminated a large area and killed a few people.
This micro-reactor, although it has a power output about 700 times smaller than Chernobyl, contains proportionately more fuel, because it is designed to operate for decades without refueling.
This risk is that Bad Guys(TM) with explosives could breach the core and produce a large “dirty bomb” style contamination event.
Although the amount of radioisotopes released would be perhaps fifty or a hundred times smaller than the amount released at Chernobyl, it would still be a MAJOR release of nasty high level waste. A cleanup could easily cost billions - depending on the location - even if it didn’t kill a single person.
Do you fear the micro reactors enough to demand they not pursue it?
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