Portable Nuclear Battery in the Development Stages 439
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."
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)
Fakey McFake (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Re:Perfect thing to fit on a truck to ram somewher (Score:3, Insightful)
Huh? You asked who would want to blow up these reactors. Al Qaeda would. You don't think the membership of Al Qaeda constitutes a horde??? Why does it matter how many of them were needed for 9/11?
What exactly do you think mortality has to do with anything? Everybody dies. Not everybody is murdered. Murder is a big deal under any sane moral or legal system. Death is neutral.
And what the hell is wrong with the Military Commissions Act? It's the codification of the same Law of War that has been used by every common law nation in the last 500 years!
Re:Perfect thing to fit on a truck to ram somewher (Score:2, Insightful)
quick, better rip out all your smoke alarms least the terrorists get them!
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.
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.
Re:Perfect thing to fit on a truck to ram somewher (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
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.
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.
Re:This just in from the fearmongering Times (Score:1, Insightful)
1. You place an equivalence between the Bible, and the examples of killing in it, and the extremist literature on sale in mosques that calls for the killing of people who leave Islam and turning the world into a global caliphate ruled by the sadistic and inhuman Sharia laws.
On this note any discussion about the contents of literature becomes meaningless. You could write children's books about the murder of children of mixed race marriages and place it into preschool libraries, because, after all, "They still have the Bible in there and that also speaks about killing!"
2. You use your personal anecdotal experiences as 'proof'. You fail to, however, say why any of those muslim families fail to react to literature in 1 out of 4 mosques they visit that treats nonmuslims in the same way as Mein Kampf treats jews. Would you find it surprising if churces had Mein Kampf on sale? Or rather, would you implicity expect that Christians who went to churches where Mein Kampf was on sale should react to it in some way, or by not reacting have incurred some form of moral debt or show of mixed loyalties? I would think you would have.
3. You initially denied that any widespread threat or hate existed. You now assert that it is not surprising if it does, hence you are contradicting yourself. You cannot both state that no meaningful hate and desire to implement Sharia exist, and then follow up by saying it is the most natural and expected thing in the world if it does. This is contradictory - to say something does not exist, and then that it is very natural if it does exist. I disagree with you about the validity of that hate, but the above is enough.
As a result of this I cannot consider you a sane person it is meaningful to discuss with by any standard I know. Have a day that is the way you deserve.
Re:Perfect thing to fit on a truck to ram somewher (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:Perfect thing to fit on a truck to ram somewher (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, I would bet the reactor is, at *best*, 25% efficient. If there are no moving parts, then it's probably much, much worse than this. In any case, I would like to see how something the size of a bathtub can reject 20 MW of heat.
If the average bathtub is 3 cubic meters, that's almost 70 kw/liter of heat generation. That requires some serious flow rates of water to cool it.
Leaky? (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh - that's okay then....
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.
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.
Re:Perfect thing to fit on a truck to ram somewher (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?
SONY (Score:1, Insightful)
Just so long as Sony don't make 'em.
Ha,ha - CAPTCHA is "recall"! You couldn't make it up! http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/10/17/sony_japan_recalls_90k_vaio_batteries/ [reghardware.co.uk]
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 alternative. There is. There are plenty of alternatives, in fact. The difficulty is actually that there is an ever-increasing demand due to ever increasing sources of energy demands and population increase. No one solution will meet this demand, period. Nuclear will be part of the solution, so will solar. Centralized generation will be part of the solution, so will decentralized local generation. Increase in power output will be part, as will an active pursuit of demand reduction through energy efficiency. Your fallacy is thinking that there is one true way, and that the 'governments' are 'realizing' it.
As a quick aside; solar energy has a lot more to do with how you build things than with how you turn sunlight into electricity. The facing of windows, the use of different materials, and paying attention to how the environment affects the building. Walmart, of all people, have done an amazing job of turning some of their stores into very energy efficient buildings in part using 'solar energy'. And it's not predicated on it being daylight all the time, or near the equator. Article here [energy.gov], and it's a very good example of how attacking the problem on multiple flanks is far more useful than shouting from the hilltops how there is only one possible solution, and everything else has drawbacks. Of course everything else has drawbacks. Everything has drawbacks. The trick is to balance them into something ultimately more useful, where the drawbacks cancel.
Re:Perfect thing to fit on a truck to ram somewher (Score:3, Insightful)
2) Do you understand the chemical properties of uranium hydride? Your statements about cooling are groundless.
Welcome to exciting world of nuclear engineering, where nuclear engineers do the design work. Go get them some coffee.
Possibilities (Score:3, Insightful)
First, I doubt this would get into widespread use, it would instantly generate high return targets for terrorists. Dig one up and blow it up and you would spread the radioactive uranium across a wide area and into the atmosphere.
It might be useful at the south pole research stations. Currently they operate on generators running off JP-8 jet fuel I believe and produce 1 megawatt of electricity. With 27 megawatts of thermal output, you could get a lot more electrical output and keep more of an area warm. This leads to another place where it may be useful, as a power plant and heat source for a lunar or martian base.
Re:Perfect thing to fit on a truck to ram somewher (Score:3, Insightful)
I do have to respectfully disagree with your view that what we're doing will work in the long run. Tactically there are many successes, and those are to your credit and to the credit of all the troops there trying to do the right thing. But strategically, the war is a disaster. We basically took a thinly balanced set of regional politics and made it much worse by empowering Iran, inflaming relations with Turkey, and unleashing years of sectarian wars in Iraq. We didn't create the underlying problems in Iraq: the power struggle between the Kurds, the Shia and the Sunni, or Iranian aspirations to regional control, and I honestly believe that Saddam was so near collapse that we would have had to reckon with geopolitics anyway. But our current course of action is like smelling gas in a house, worrying that there could be an explosion, and lighting a match to try to burn off the gas. The key actions that would have served to stabilize Iraq and the region are political - we should have brokered a deal with Turkey and the Kurds BEFORE invading, we should have worked harder on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before invading, we should have insisted to Mubarak that Egypt hold free and fair elections (which would have resulted in political participation by the Muslim Brotherhood) before invading. The list of needed political actions goes on and on: negotiate some sort of oilfields services for a no-nukes deal with Iran, enlist the rest of the world (esp. China and Russia) in reconstruction, shut down AQ Khan's nuclear network, force the Saudis to get serious about slowing financing for terrorist and insurgent groups, etc.
Huge props to you all for all the successes you've accomplished, but long-term success or failure of an Iraqi state depends on political actions, and until those are taken, we can't change the fundamental situation there.
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...