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Portable Nuclear Battery in the Development Stages
Posted by
Zonk
on Mon Nov 26, 2007 02:29 AM
from the will-be-nice-if-it-happens dept.
from the will-be-nice-if-it-happens dept.
Xight writes "The Santa Fe Reporter has up an article about a portable nuclear reactor, about the size of a hot tub. Despite it's 'small' size the company that is planning to develop the product (Hyperion Power Generation), claims it could power up to 25,000 homes. 'Though it would produce 27 megawatts worth of thermal energy, Hyperion doesn't like to think of its product as a reactor. It's self-contained, involves no moving parts and, therefore, doesn't require a human operator. "In fact, we prefer to call it a 'drive' or a 'battery' or a 'module' in that it's so safe," Hyperion spokeswoman Deborah Blackwell says. "Like you don't open a double-A battery, you just plug [the reactor] in and it does its chemical thing inside of it. You don't ever open it or mess with it."' If all goes according to plan, Hyperion could have a factory in New Mexico by late 2012, and begin producing 4,000 of these
reactors."
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Perfect thing to fit on a truck to ram somewhere (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Perfect thing to fit on a truck to ram somewher (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://rndpic.com/ [rndpic.com]
Re:Perfect thing to fit on a truck to ram somewher (Score:5, Insightful)
It is exactly this attitude that has Americans cowering in their homes while their country is being raped from inside.
Why exactly should "we" hope that these are not mainstream? Becuase "we" fear that there are all those "evil" people out there (somehwere?) to get us and try and kill us? That attitude is fabricated crap, generated from the kind of attitude present in text like this. What exactly do you mean by "high level mischief"? Please explain. Are YOU implying some specific person would/will take out the radioactive material and use it to harm people? That's a catchy implication, but not real. Who? Show me all these boogymen. Show me there are hoardes of people out there sharpening their knives to destroy civilized society. It's a bullshit lie. To me, flippant fear mongering like that is most of the problem here, not some boogyman called from thin air to support the fear-based attitude you're spreading.
Parent
Apathy is a more serious problem (Score:5, Insightful)
While you are correct that terrorist threats are over stated there are other good reasons for hoping that these batteries are not widely used, looking at past events can show why. The use of radioisotopes to power thermoelectric generators is not a new idea. During the 1960s to the 1980s the former Soviet union used Radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTG) to power lighthouses and other remote equipment along the Russian northern coastline. These worked well for the most part during their service life, however the Soviet union collapsed and most of the RTG's in place were forgotten. Since then these devices have posed a considerable pollution risk to the environment as their casings degrade over time. They have also been associated with several deaths as people unaware of the dangers they contain have come into contact with them in remote areas. Many old RTG's are still in the environment today long past their design life. The Environmental Foundation Bellona has an informative article [bellona.org] about old Soviet RTG's.
It will be interesting to see if future American companies and governments are as keen to clean up old RTG's from the environment as the current Russian government are today. I think that apathy is by far the greater danger than the terrorist.
Parent
rtg article is interesting, but not a huge concern (Score:3, Interesting)
Thanks for posting the link about the Russian RTG's. After reading it, however, I'm not convinced that these portable nuclear reactors will be of such a great concern.
For starters, these generators are planned to provided electricity for population centers, not remote lighthouses and the such. So the likelyhood that they could be forgotten is unlikely since they'd provide power to tens of thousands of homes. Their absence would be noticed quickly. Also, since this is private enterprise, there's a commerci
Re:Perfect thing to fit on a truck to ram somewher (Score:5, Insightful)
Specific to your point, who did paid them? Really. Go find out. Please, post it here - becuase to date, no one has tracked it down, at least that I have found. The non money trail is a big gaping hole in the investigation that didn't happen.
More to the point, who gives a shit? Let's put things into perspective:
2.4 Million people die in the US every year.
120K die in accidents
600K die of heart disease
10 times as many people die, every single year from Septicemia. Ever hear of it?
Let's not even start with numbers of civilian deaths at the hands of US troops abroad, before and after 9/11.
Fasts:
There are crazy people.
Carzy people will kill other people.
You can't stop the crazy people without becoming a totalitarian police state and taking away freedoms from everyone.
9/11 was a big deal, mostly becuase it was blown way way out of proportion. It was like 20 people. Hardly a hoarde. Hardly even a blip in the mortality of the US. It was the media and opportunistic politicians that made 9/11.
What those people did on 9/11 is exactly why fear mongering about nuclear material is so ridiculous. They did a low-tech thing, designed as a symbol, and over the next 6 years US citizens did all the rest. The vast majority of the damage caused to the US after 9/11 and because of the "9/11 mentality" happened because of Americans who were susceptible to fear and control - NOT from those people who flew the planes.
You ought to go actually read the military commisions act. See what the US has come to.
Then think hard about infant mortality in the US and compare what happens with dying infants each year to the 9/11 attack.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Huh? You asked who would want to blow up these reactors. Al Qaeda would. Yo
Re:Perfect thing to fit on a truck to ram somewher (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, I do not think Al Quaeda constitutes a horde. I'm willing to be proven wrong by independently verifiable facts.
To get into the question of murder, one has to dig deeply in international policy and the Geneva Convention - which are not very sane or moral. The Geneva Convention says that if you're a big country, you can divide your people up into fighting and non-fighting groups - and when the fighting groups kill people, it's not murder. That system only works for the big countries, and the smaller groups don't buy it. Death is death, killing is killing.
If you want to go down the line of "morality" and talk about who has killed whom, the US loses that argument quickly. Do you think what the US has done in Iraq is sane?
The military commissions act makes it possible for the US government to designate ANY PERSON an enemy combatant for terrorists acts or (more importantly) aiding or interacting with any other person who acts against the interests of the US. SIC. Once designated, that person basically loses their rights, and enters a kangaroo court system that can include secret evidence, prosecutors talking privately with the judge, sealed testimony from anonymous accusers, etc etc etc. A big black fuck-you box.
As I said, you have to go read it, carefully.
Parent
Re:Perfect thing to fit on a truck to ram somewher (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Carzy people will kill other people.
You can't stop the crazy people without becoming a totalitarian police state and taking away freedoms from everyone.
Which isn't actually possible. If freedoms were taken away from eveyone there'd be no police and indeed no rulers... In any real world totalitarian police state said "crazy people" are likely to wind up joining the police force...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
9/11 was a big deal, because 20 guys made an opportunistic attack that leveled several city blocks of the most populous city in the US using nothing but box cutters. It was also the single largest attack aimed solely at American civilians ever to occur.
We knew that Al Qaeda existed, an
Re:Perfect thing to fit on a truck to ram somewher (Score:5, Insightful)
Please don't patronize, it's unattractive.
You wrote: If I can think of it so can any asshole with the funds and the determination to pull it off. And one of the assholes will get lucky.
This is the core fallacy of fear mongering: Taking a rare or non-existent threat and treating it as credible. It turns out there are thousands of really cheap ways for small groups to cripple modern society. Criminals are really good at coming up with them, and so are think tanks the government pays to research such things. Guess what: there is no way to prevent them! But - amazingly, none of these scenarios are happening. There is a lot more to it than "I can think of it so it must be scary."
I believe radioactivity is a great way to generate electricity. The French figured this out long ago, and have the safest and cleanest energy on the planet. If engineered and maintained well, nuclear plants are safer and more environmentally friendly than any other mass power generation system.
It seems to me there are enormous, global industries working on "better ways to make electricity" that you refer to - so please enlighten us all, what are these ways you refer to? How should human society safely and efficiently produce power for all 6 Billion of us?
Perhaps, the US might start working on ways to have fewer (asshole) people in the world angry at them and wanting to blow up their cities with dirty bombs? That might be a good place to start.
Parent
Re:Perfect thing to fit on a truck to ram somewher (Score:5, Insightful)
The only reliable means we have of producing energy are fuel powered reactors/power stations and hydro-electric plants and these are what a country should base it's energy policy on.
It sounds to me as though you have an irrational fear of nuclear power which is a shame because we're going to be seeing it utilised a lot more often now that governments are realising there simply is no other alternative.
Parent
Are you from the NW? (Score:3, Insightful)
The only reliable means we have of producing energy are fuel powered reactors/power stations and hydro-electric plants and these are what a country should base it's energy policy on.
This is, in fact, a common misperception held by people in the northern, and in particular, north-western states, who already have a relatively clean energy mix - but in large part because their grids are built for it. It's easy to advocate for something you already have.
But you also seem to think there is no other altern
Re:Perfect thing to fit on a truck to ram somewher (Score:5, Insightful)
And the smaller the devices the bigger the safety issues. It's a simple function of the number of of devices (possible targets), even if the damage done per incident goes down the chances of an incident will go up.
Whether wind farms are 'unsightly' is a matter of taste, the same argument was made in the 1600's in the Netherlands and people are still coming here from all over the world to look at the windmills. A good part of that comes from people who are against any form of change, no matter what. I'd certainly be rather looking out my window at a bunch of windmills than at a nuclear dome.
Hydro electric dams can be constructed in such a way that they do minimal damage, especially if they do not create a large basin but are in an area where there is plenty of flow, Sweden has a lot of experience with this. For the UK that would not work however.
And yes, time is running out and something needs to be done.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Perfect thing to fit on a truck to ram somewher (Score:5, Insightful)
Here are a few corrections to your thinking:
1 - It is not possible, even with super efficient technology solutions, to generate power density level high enough for industrial purposes from solar or wind power. Making cars and cranes from solar panels simply will not work. Cf. statement 0.
2 - Your imagination regarding the safety of nuclear power and the rational conclusions about the safety of such systems based on the historical record and the facts are not congruous.
3 - The rational process of assessing risk and making choices about how to safely run a society is not a democratic process, and it should depend in no way on assuaging the fears of individuals, or the assertions from the lay public.
Parent
Re:Perfect thing to fit on a truck to ram somewher (Score:5, Insightful)
There are plenty of things that are "not safe" if improperly used or handled. Which just proved... nothing.
Besides, don't you think some people might notice relatively quickly when 25,000 homeowners call in to report that their power's out? That, if implemented, there just might be one or two, or even three safeguards involved? Perhaps you should see what we already do to safeguard the nuclear materials that are already used around you from day to day? (Material structure analysis, cancer radiation therapy, and so on.)
Also, when discussing radioactivity there's also a few little facts that need to be considered, like how much radioactivity? And what type? Some things are highly radioactive, generating a tremendous amount of alpha particles that you need... an entire sheet of paper to block. I live in Denver, the mile high city, where you can pickup a nice dose, relatively speaking, just by spending the day in the park.
So I agree with, "You need to go learn a lot more about physics, radioactivity, power generation, the biological effects of radiation, logic, risk assessment, and terrorism before continuing to make assertions that are based on false assumptions." Especially since you seem to be in the all-risk-is-unacceptable any-radiation-whatsoever-is-bad camp.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The coal burning plants are really bad, they cause tons of trouble downstream, but with the scrubbers in place at least the particulate pollution is a little better than it was in the p
Re:Perfect thing to fit on a truck to ram somewher (Score:4, Insightful)
- waste
- safety
- containment in case the 'safety' bit fails
Waste would not be a problem if we would be allowed to reprocess the waste from our current reactors. However, that is a legislative issue. Additionally, a large portion of the next generation (Gen IV) reactors are supposed to run on the waste of their predecessors and produce far less waste than before.
Many of these "new" (Loosely used, some are enhancements of old designs with improved tech. Others are new since the tech now exists to make them feasible) reactors will have significantly improved safety controls over their predecessors; many of these are passive such that the reactor will stop itself instead of having a guy do it. A lot of these designs are also closed cycle so a large portion of the containment problems would be alleviated.
Glancing through your posts, it's pretty clear that you're a solar/wind guy but you did acknowledge that nuclear was a need to solve the problems as a stopgap. My opinion is that we need nuclear as a replacement for coal plants given that both are pretty much continuous output. Wind and solar have their places but we can't always count on their consistency. Hell, solar won't be able to provide all our energy needs due to the maximum energy that hits the Earth at a given location. But that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be considered.
Energy is ultimately going to be provided by a suite of sources: wind, hydro, geothermal, nuclear, solar, etc. They all have their places and none of them can be ignored. All need R&D to work on ways to improve safety, manufacturing, efficiency, and the like to make them more feasible and attractive to industry.
However, I see the energy problem as a two-pronged problem: supply and demand. Everyone continues to focus on the supply side so heavily while demand generally goes overlooked. I think a large portion of the problem stems from the fact that reducing demand is seen as a move to decrease "quality of life" even though it doesn't have to. I really think there needs to be technology (or legislative) goals to reduce power consumption of appliances throughout the house and office: air conditioning, fridge, stove, computer, printer, networking equipment, etc... By reducing demand and making our supply more environmentally friendly, I think we can make a pretty big difference in emissions and air quality, future energy supply security and growth (plug-in electrics), job security for many, environmental damage (coal mining), etc...
Parent
Re:Perfect thing to fit on a truck to ram somewher (Score:4, Insightful)
Like 3 million other people, I was on the Tube on the morning of the London bombings. 54/3,000,000 = 0.000018. If the same number of people were killed every day I could expect to survive for 3,000,000/54/365 = 152 years.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The key word being or. He said rare or non-existant.
The fact that you can mention the bombings with a location, and we know of the SINGLE instance that you are referring to suggests that it is pretty damned rare.
Want an example of something that isn't rare?
Remember that time on I-95 there was that multi-death car crash?
Re:Perfect thing to fit on a truck to ram somewher (Score:5, Interesting)
Then you should be seriously pissed about coal-fired electric generation. Do some reading before jerking your knee.
You're breathing radioactive waste right now, and it didn't come from a nuke plant.
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
Ah, but good luck convincing the general public of that. The idea would not be to kill thousands of people but to make that large area unusable. A dirty bomb would not kill many people outright but it might not be a good idea to live in the affected area without some c
Re:Perfect thing to fit on a truck to ram somewher (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Perfect thing to fit on a truck to ram somewher (Score:4, Interesting)
As far as portable reactors are concerned there are some on the market.
Russians are in the process of productising the reactor which is currently fitted to Arktika class icebreakers into a mobile powerplant. You just float it into a suitable bay anywhere and run cables to the ground. Bingo - a 340 MW at your disposal. They even have pending options (not firm orders AFAIK) from various small island states in the Pacific. By the way - if I have to chose between a reactor on land and this, the mini-ship definitely sounds like a better option. It is cheaper, better and easier to dispose of the waste.
They Russians also had a the portable nuclear reactor proof-of-concept as far back as 1980-es. The thing was mounted on an "octopus" truck like those used for ICBM launch. The details are still classified so I have no idea what they used. The pictures I have seen said that it used a fast neutron reactor which is something I find hard to believe in. None the less, the system existed and AFAIK several prototypes were manufactured.
Nothing new here, move along.
Parent
A lot of propaganda going on here ... (Score:5, Insightful)
"In fact, we prefer to call it a 'drive' or a 'battery' or a 'module' in that it's so safe," Hyperion spokeswoman Deborah Blackwell says.
Uh, yeah, except it is a reactor. If they want to emphasize how safe it is, that's great, but renaming products to get rid of words people don't like is just dumb. "Digital Consumer Enablement," anyone?
"This whole idea is loony and not worthy of too much attention," Los Alamos Study Group Executive Director Greg Mello says. "Of course, factoring in enough cronyism, corruption and official ignorance and boosterism, it's possible the principals could make some money during the initial stages, before the crows come home to roost."
Great. Don't even consider the actual design of the thing. Not a word about what, if any problems, it might create -- just dismiss it as "loony" and chalk up anything good anyone says about it to cronyism and corruption.
Does anyone have any information about the Hyperion reactor that isn't either corporate PR or wacko fearmongering? Because it sounds interesting, and I'd like to learn more about it, but not from either of these folks, thanks.
Re:A lot of propaganda going on here ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:A lot of propaganda going on here ... (Score:5, Interesting)
The engineering is perfectly feasible, it's just a matter of whether or not it is cost effective (it probably is, or will be soon at the rate energy prices are rising), and whether or not people would be willing to live next to a tiny reactor (the real problem). Beyond that, it's just a matter of working through the massive bureaucracy of getting licencing from the NRC.
The notion of having a completely unmanned reactor seems like a recipe for disaster though. The Toshiba plan of keeping a few people nearby to ensure security and to monitor the supposedly fail safe systems seems safer.
Parent
Re:A lot of propaganda going on here ... (Score:4, Funny)
If Sony ever announces a similar project in my backyard, I'm moving!
Parent
Re:A lot of propaganda going on here ... (Score:4, Informative)
This thing is called a "Radioisotope thermoelectric generator".
It is nothing new, they were used on the Voyager spacecraft.
They can be much smaller or larger than a bathtub, as the article says.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator [wikipedia.org]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You might want to do some basic research before proclaiming your ignorance to the whole wide internet like that.
Spokesperson without a clue (Score:3, Informative)
Uh huh... Nuclear reactions are not chemical in nature... spokesperson without a clue.
But on a side note, am I the only one who thought of Asimov's Foundation series, when the Foundationers had nuclear reactors the size of walnuts??? [everything2.com]
Seriously, though I remember something similar made in Japan that would power a remote city in Alaska for 30 years without pollution. [adn.com]
Yay! Go Nukular!
Re:Spokesperson without a clue (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Spokesperson without a clue (Score:5, Funny)
"Nuclear reactors don't kill people.
People who open nuclear reactors kill people."
Parent
Error in summary (Score:5, Informative)
Portable nuclear batteries? (Score:4, Funny)
This is wierd (Score:5, Informative)
Wierd. First, it's not a "nuclear battery". Those have been around since the 1950s, and they typically have quite modest power output, from a few watts to a few hundred watts. They're just some radioactive material decaying at its normal rate; they don't use a chain reaction. If this thing is supposed to produce 27MW, it has to be a real nuclear reactor.
And it is. Here's the patent application [uspto.gov], out of Los Alamos National Laboratory. The basic idea is this: "This present invention achieves control by utilizing the properties of a fissile metal hydride as a self-contained nuclear fuel and neutron energy moderator. If the physical size, fissile metal content and enrichment are appropriately selected, the metal will absorb ambient hydrogen, which moderates the neutron energies so that nuclear fission criticality is achieved. The temperature will then be increased by the fission reactions until the dissociation pressure of the hydrogen for that temperature is greater than the ambient pressure of the hydrogen, at which point the hydrogen dissociates from the hydride and the source becomes sub-critical." So that's the way it self-regulates. It's supposed to operate at a constant temperature; if you remove heat with a working fluid, it produces more heat; if you don't, it stabilizes at its normal operating temperature. It's a uranium reactor, using 5% enriched uranium. Runs at 350C to 800C. Uses heat pipes to get the heat out to a working fluid, probably water, used to make steam and drive a turbine.
It's not clear if this is a workable design. There's no prototype. But it's at least plausible. It's not a totally new idea; the TRIGA [ga.com] reactors are self-regulating in a somewhat similar fashion.
The "Los Alamos Study Group" that made critical comments has nothing to do with Los Alamos National Laboratories. Their director "worked as a transportation planner, natural foods manufacturing entrepreneur, high school teacher, hazardous waste investigator, and contaminant hydrologist." [lasg.org]
I had to look at the company's site (Score:5, Funny)
"Invented at Los Alamos: Patent Pending".
Uh huh. I'm totally looking forward to placing my order.
BTW: I see no mention of hot-tub sizes on the website... though, I didn't read too carefully. They claim to be about 30% cheaper than current liquid moderated reactors.
How is it safe? (Score:3, Insightful)
In case of this thing, if the turbine stops, if the coolant circuit goes empty for any reason, I can't see how this could be stopped if it starts melting.
Not the Holy Grail, but close (Score:5, Insightful)
For me, the sad thing about alternative energy is the way that all the technologies compete instead of cooperating. Different parts of the world demand different approaches and different mixes. For instance, as a thermal generator this reactor could usefully complement thermal solar arrays, so that (simplifying) the array heats the fluid in the day and the reactor heats it at night. A conventional nuclear reactor would not work like that because it has to be too big, i.e. it is out of scale compared to the solar source. If the waste heat could be used for area heating, it would work well in far Northern latitudes where heating demand is greater than power demand.
I can't help but think that this is one case where serious joined up thinking is required. If the US Government can spend 0.6% of the Federal budget on NASA, which is speculative research, isn't it worth spending 0.6% on safe alternative nuclear reactors rather than driving up the price of corn? Rather than try and substitute oil with uneconomic ethanol, why not try to substitute oil used for heating with heat from nuclear sources? The effect would be the same. A policy that oil should only be used for transportation, and that vehicle efficiency should be progressively increased, would reduce dependence on the Middle East just as quickly, or quicker, than pork barrel farm ethanol projects, and would have more long term sustainability.
Mutant Energizer bunny, Batman! (Score:4, Funny)
KeS
Totall brilliant, but doomed to fail... (Score:5, Insightful)
No need for big power grids, along with all the inefficiencies and expense they entail.
Only one problem: It has the word "nuclear" in its name so it'll never be accepted by the ignorant hippies, the cold-war-contitioned public or the politicians. Even though coal power is much worse on all levels (but the hippies can hold a lump of coal and feel how natural it is...)
It could be used in places like India or China to prevent them from destroying the planet via fossil fuels. I for one sincerely hope it is. China is already messing about with pebble bed reactors, this is the next logical step for them to reduce their dependence on oil.
Similar to batteries... (Score:3, Funny)
"May explode if disposed of in fire"
Although, I suppose whether it's a warning label or a usage guide depends on your political views.
It's like a AA battery. *Kaboom!* (Score:3, Funny)
It'll never materialize (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Fakey McFake (Score:5, Informative)
It is also pretty apparent that you've never seen a nuclear reactor. A reactor itself is pretty small compared to the overall size of a plant. It's the cooling loops, turbines, myriad of control and power equipment, and containment structure that take up space.
Parent
Re:Energy vs Power (Score:4, Funny)
Parent