Pebble Beds???
Posted on 07/16/2008 5:28:25 PM PDT by Kaslin
Energy: What is small enough to be hauled on a truck, has the power to provide electricity to 45,000 homes, can help the U.S. cut its dependence on foreign oil and has no emissions? Hint: The Sierra Club won't like it.
Popular Mechanics quotes NuScale as saying that if its design is approved, it will begin tests with the hope of getting final approval a few years from now. Should the process go smoothly, the mini reactors could go online by 2015.
Mini nuclear power plants, from end to end, would be no more than 65 feet long and have no visible cooling towers to ruin anyone's "viewshed." A conventional nuclear plant can eat up thousands of acres and cannot "disappear" into a populated area.
Because of their size, the mini plants can be built at a central factory and shipped via rail or large truck anywhere in the country, keeping construction costs down.
An Energy Department official told New Scientist magazine four years ago that such reactors wouldn't require maintenance or need to be refueled. After their useful life of about 30 years they could be returned to the factory.
(Excerpt) Read more at ibdeditorials.com ...
I read about this idea many years ago, but it seems to me that back then they were talking about something much smaller for individual homes.
We need “Shipstones!”
I think it was Hitachi that had a small reactor that was supposed to be buried 30 feet underground, turned on, and run until it ran out of fuel 30 years later. You dig it up then send it back to Hitachi for recycling. If I remember correctly, there was a town in Alaska that was trying to get an NRC license to run one. That was maybe five years ago.
Drop one of these inside the factory and take it off grid, and sell the extra power back to TXU.
Sounds like a plan if the accounting works.
>>>I think it was Hitachi that had a small reactor that was supposed to be buried 30 feet underground, turned on, and run until it ran out of fuel 30 years later. You dig it up then send it back to Hitachi for recycling. If I remember correctly, there was a town in Alaska that was trying to get an NRC license to run one. That was maybe five years ago.<<<
The town you refer to is Galena, Alaska, and the company is Toshiba. Galena has been working for years to get the “nuclear battery” up and going - gas there is selling for $7.00 a gallon and the residents pay 39 cents for their diesel-powered electricity. The city council discussed the Toshiba nuclear battery last week - I don’t know what the result of the discussion was, though.
That should be 39 cents per kilowatt hour. First draft follies again.
Irradiation is an ugly, unescapable reality. Any nuclear reactor, no matter how small or large will, over time, leave an increasingly radioactive “footprint” in the soil around the reactor. You can encase the reactor. That helps. But you would still have to “entomb” the encasement or move it someplace too.
Nuclear waste is still a serious problem that needs more attention in order to come up with viable solutions.
Just don’t call it a bl@ck hole...
If the waste is still emitting radiation, it must be good for something. I’m certain that someone will find a good use for it, just as someone found a use for the inflammable, volatile by-product from the refining of kerosene.
GREAT IDEA.
There should be one in every county.
Perhaps we could have zero property taxes for those within a certain radius of the device and then a low rate for a distance outside that - to quiet the NIMBY crowd
Excuse Me????
My b-i-l told me that there was once a large scale power outage in the Northwest somewhere, and a small city hooked up its power grid to a nuclear submarine that was in port. Seems to me these plants would be just about the same size. Why hasn’t anyone contacted the Navy to find out who builds theirs? Or more importantly, why hasn’t the company that builds the plants for the Navy come out with a ‘domestic’ model?
The old Soviet Union had a small refrigerator size nuclear reactor. They sent one to the US for a demo a few years ago. The Soviets also used nuclear power on their spaceships for years. Small is a good way to go.
bring it on!
Pebble Beds???
That would be these: (imagine a capacitance of 3800 farads in a package the size of a AA cell)
http://www.worldandi.com/subscribers/feature_detail.asp?num=23938
But the article above is about a miniature generator using the same fission technology as standard large nuclear plants. Toshiba released a proposal for a one-rod "village reactor" several years ago, and even offered to install one in Alaska for free. But gas was $2/gallon then, so Alaska turned down the offer.
Anything but that! The enviro-whackos already bust their cap at anything with the word 'Nuclear' in it (see MRI vs. NMR). Instead call it 'the mystery box of Gaia-friendly renewable energy', that should keep them off their guard long enough to get a few thousand of them into production.
The compact nuke plants in a sub use weapons-grade enriched uranium, which creates some security issues. On a sub which already carries nuclear weapons it's no big deal, their security covers both.
Nuclear waste is a "problem" only if you bury it for good. If you recycle it, as the Japanese already do, it's a resource.
But we can’t recycle it...Jimmy Carter fixed that for us....
Bump for later reading, I need to come up to speed on this with respect to terrorist targeting.
Anyone thought of taking a dozen of these or so and putting them out in the shale region of Utah and Colorado? That should generate enough power to heat the shale and get us a century or two of fuel.
Okay, the Sierra Club won’t like that either...
Can we send nuclear waste up in small amounts?
There was a massive blackout all along the northeast coast, I think it went as far down as Virginia or Georgia, back in 2003.
First tell us what you did.
If they get it down to 13 feet long then we can have nuke powered cars and the enviro-weenies will be happy that we're not using yucky oil.
Yeah, France is really hurting for good soil for their wine and ag industries. They only have about 80% of the electricity provided by nuclear power, and have been doing so for many decades. Why, I'm sure that the Eiffel Tower itself is unsafe to even photograph these days.
Sell your alarmist claptrap elsewhere.
This is so much BS.
Fifteen years after the Trojan Nuclear Plant shutdown, redidual radiation is gone, period.
As for spent fuel, it can be reprocessed and put back into a reactor and burned down. What is left after that second run can be sealed in canisters designed by Bechtel Engineering for this purpose almost 30 years ago, and depostited in the Aleutian Trench for recycling back into the earth’s crust from hence it orginally came.
The ultimate in recycling.
I think of that book every time the topic of energy comes up. After reading several of his books, I decided that Heinlien was a seriously disturbed individual.
That is a great idea. Generate steam for the removal of the trapped oil using nuclear power. Ideally from a few of these small portable reactors.
It appears that we have everything we need to generate vast amounts of energy from a variety of sources. All we need is some creativity, something that politicians are devoid of unless it has to do with fleecing the public.
What kind of safety and security features will these mini-reactors require in view of the many Muzzies we have in our country?
(What am I talking about? There is nothing to fear from the ROP.)
I believe You are incorrect. levels of radiation around a modern plant are no higher than ambient levels.
There is no radioactive foot print with modern plants.
Alpha and beta particles are trapped and gamma radiation is contained.
Nuclear plants will make electrolysis of water into hydrogen extremely cheap.
when millions of electric cars take their kW from the grid, we’ll need much more power than the grid can currently (NPI) supply.
One other factor myopic liberals cannot see and therefore, are unprepared for.
Why not go whole hog, and put pigskin panties on their heads?
You are mistaken.
your link did not work?
drop me note with a working link?
LOL. Nice if someone really responds like that/
Ya but http://www.kiewit.com/ is huge company
I’m just talking about the SIZE of the plant. If it’s possible to build them that small, that’s terrific!
The blackout was caused by problems with the transmission lines across long distances. If folks have little nuke plants close by, they won't have to be bothered about a problem with the transmission lines hundreds of miles away.
It worked for me - do you have the Acrobat plugin?
McNukes, kewl, take fries with that please.
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