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http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/news_item/hyperion-power-generation-inc-welcomes-the-release-of-the-department-of-energys-draft-funding-opportunity-announcement-for-small-modular-reactors/

You know what else would have prevented a meltdown ? NOT shutting down the reactor. If the tsunami had killed the operators of the plant, the plant would have survived intact. The plants were built with the assumption that it would not be possible during a disaster to cut off the plant's access to the grid. Then the grid connection was made along a single long line built over the sea.

I mean, come on.

I'm not suggesting the following is a good idea, but a nuclear reactor is a hell of a lot more stable than a diesel generator. So in a nuclear power plant, why not have a reactor, running on spent fuel for example, which can run entirely cold (cold meaning ~200 degrees, the point being that the reactor is perfectly safe without cooling), and have that pump provide power to the cooling system for the real reactors ? It wouldn't need to provide more than a few kilowatts.

Something like this would be more than adequate

That way even if the plant and it's operators are completely cut off, the cooling system will remain in operation for years after the shutdown order is given - and it only needs to run for 24 hours.

Does anyone see this as anything other that a PR stunt? Facebook's datacenter uses 30MW of electricity -- a 100KW solar panel array will produce 0.1% of their power - not even a drop in the bucket. (note that it's not 0.3% since the solar panels don't provide power all day).

If they were really interested in reducing their carbon footprint with solar, they'd be investing in one of the large-scale power plants being built in the desert where they can buy more KW per dollar. it doesn't matter whether they reduce carbon in Arizona or in Oregon, it's all the same to the environment.

And if they were *really* interested in reducing their carbon footprint, they'd use a small nuclear reactor to generate 100% of their power on-site. Which would make a *real* difference in their carbon footprint rather than a meaningless symbolic gesture.

Taking orders for delivery in 2013 http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/

Well said!

See also:

Plans:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan
http://www.earth-policy.org/index.php?/books/pb3/pb3_table_of_contents
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power

Cars:
http://www.evnut.com/gasoline_oil.htm
http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/oil-gas-crude/461
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/09eb7f4c973349f2?hl=en

Agriculture:
http://www.remineralize.org/
http://www.westernwatersheds.org/watmess/watmess_2002/2002html_summer/article6.htm
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
http://drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx

But, with all that said, the same sorts of reasons solar energy is getting better (better materials, better designs, better discussions, better insights into physics) is the same reason small scale nuclear is getting better (even as I would agree solar is safer and more decentralized than conventional nuclear). And example of small nuclear:
http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/

Related case for nuclear power:
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/

Let's say, in a moderate worse case in Japan that 100,000 people die from some nuclear radiation accident and the clean up cost a couple trillion dollars. Nuclear power still might have been cheaper in Japan, all things considered, than coal which causes a lot of pollution and related illness.

Would it have been cheaper in that sense than solar and wind? Probably not...

Still, given this is the worst quake to have hit Japan in a century, and the nuclear plants are not being talked about as having total meltdowns, this event itself might prove how safe they can be in some situations.

Of course, dealing with direct terrorism intended to cause them to malfunction may be a different issue, but many major industrial facilities, like at Bhopal, have that risk. And ideas like Hyperion help reduce that risk. Ultimately, if we try harder to make our global economy work for everyone, we might have less fears that people will commit terrorism because the hate us because we support their oppressors for various reasons...

On economic transformation, see:
http://peswiki.com/index.php/OS:Economic_Transformation

BTW, an example of perhaps cold fusion (still needs more confirmation):
http://pesn.com/2011/03/07/9501782_Cold_Fusion_Steams_Ahead_at_Worlds_Oldest_University/

Personally, I want to be able to print solar panels in a solar-powered 3D printer. :-)

Not so much. Depending on the design, a nuclear reactor can be self regulating.

As far as producing small nuclear power plant, check out the ones soon to be marketed by Hyperion

.

Do you have any facts to back up your guesses here?

And do you have any idea how much land has already been devoted to things like roads and related right-of-ways (hint, enough in the USA to produce all the power we need).

From here:
http://www.landartgenerator.org/blagi/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/AreaRequired1000.jpg
"Surface area required to power the world with zero carbon emissons and with solar panels alone. ... The large square is the Saharan Desert (1/4 of the overall 2030 required area) would power all of Europe and North Africa. Though very large, it is still 18 times less than the total area of that desert."

It looks about right to me. :-) And that's probably with solar panels of 10% efficiency (the kind in production). With 40% efficient solar panels, the land use would shrink by a factor of four (or two times in each direction).

I'd be curious to see such a map of land currently devoted to fossil fuel extraction and consumption in power plants. I'd expect it would be roughly the same in overall area, maybe larger. The same for land use devoted to road use. Or land use devoted to cities.

Note that as they say on that picture; "The 19 contiguous areas show what would be a reasonable responsibility for various parts of the world. They would be further divide many times..."

So, that picture is to give you a sense of scale, but people might put panels on rooftops or over parking lots in order to have more local energy security or lower energy transmission costs. So, we might never have big sites like those, but if we did, those look like good places to put them.

I found interesting the note on the front page of that Land Art Generator site: "Art has the ability to create movements and stimulate creative dialogue. The artist community has long taken a critical approach to the problems of energy use and production, which has helped to open the public eye to the severity of the problems facing us. The time is now for artists to go further and take an active role in solving the problem through their own work."

So, all part of "Blessed Unrest" that peer production takes part in:
    http://www.blessedunrest.com/

Anyway, I don't know why people keep trotting out that "density" issue.

By the way, if you like nuclear power, take a look at this:
    http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/

• hyperion power
• babcock and wilcox
• NuScale power
• sandia labs
• tsinghua university

not to mention south africa's PBMR, and the travelling wave reactor (intellectual ventures). It's simple - make a mass-producable, small, efficient reactor, use it to boil water at both the pressure and temperature of your average coal-fired power plant, and *turn off the burning of coal altogether*. And do it in scale.

That way, there isn't a horrendous capital cost (pocket nuke reactors are small and you are only replacing the boiler), the fuel is cheaper, and as a side benefit current coal plants increase their capacity factor from ~75% to above 90%.

This is really the only way to combat global warming in a way that profits everybody; it allows developing countries to leverage their experience in building coal-fired power plants to build carbon-neutral sources, and given the factory approach is comprehensively scalable, as scalable as producing fighters or bombers in WWII.

We have to do this. We have to stop dicking around with solutions that only work 15% of the way, have appallingly low capacity factors (for 53 days in a row, the windmills in denmark produced basically nada in the way of electricity, texas has an average of 8.7% capacity (ref: here ).

The stakes are too high. I encourage everyone to watch:

http://fora.tv/2009/08/18/A_REALLY_Inconvenient_Truth_Dan_Miller

which shows the true state of our affairs with regards to the climate (the person introducing Mr. Miller says, in short, "He's going to tell us all how we are really fucked".

Looking at the evidence, I agree with him.

Ed

These guys have one ready now, no fission needed. http://hyperionpowergeneration.com/ I have also heard that the US Military already has a heavy lift rocket that is currently in operation and is very safe. We could also modify the current rockets used to boost the shuttle into orbit to take lunar module up. BUT NO!! LET'S START FROM SCRATCH, BREAK THE BUDGET RE-DESIGNING THE WHEEL AND TAKE TWENTY FIVE YEARS TO GET THERE INSTEAD OF THE TEN IT TOOK US IN THE 60'S

TMI was a success. Most people do not realize that there are still three of the four reactors on TMI still in operation. TMI was successful because it proved the technology to keep the core from going critical. The amount of exposure to radiation during the TMI incident is less than half of the amount of radiation one gets during an standard dental x-ray. One working through Grand Central Station gets more exposure to radiation (from radon in the granite) than those exposed during the TMI incident. I know this because I work with four or five people who did the post accident studies and worked with the programs to mitigate the hazard during post incident operations.

Chernobyl was an accident waiting to happen. The poor reactor design, the poor safety design, and the stupid tests being performed caused the accident. To read more : http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/chernobyl/inf07.html. There are still operations happening near Chernobyl.

Anyway, if we want to handle the energy needs of the demands forth coming, nuclear is an answer. Wind power is not the answer. It only generates power, at the best estimates, 25% of the time. To get the windmills manufacture there are a lot of raw material necessary, with require large amounts of mining. Recycle materials are not always available to produce the steels necessary to provide the structure to support the blades. The birds flying into the blade is an urban and rural legend.

Solar works only during the day, and require toxic batteries to store the energy. Plus, on the environment, the materials to produce solar panels are very earth unfriendly--heavy mining for the raw materials. Supply of silica and gallium is in short supply. China and India are consuming large quantities of copper, gold, and other metals because of the development activities under way.

Bio fuels is stupid! Let burn all our food and starve to death, then no will be around to worry about how to get around because everyone will be dead. Cellulose bio fuels may work, but the US does not have the kind of conditions to allow the growth of those kind of crops. Brazil does a great job at it because they are not burning food, but special crops for bio fuel.

I personally believe thorium based reactors are best. There is an alternative as well--small distributed reactors. Hyperion and NuScale both have reactors perfect to a distributed energy solution. http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/ and http://www.nuscalepower.com/

Go nuclear. Its clear, it renewable, and it proven. It is safe.

What is MOST CONCERNING: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_hydride_bomb
"Even with these apparent problems, the great physicist Edward Teller pursued the work and detonated two of these bombs, giving off only a power of 200 tons of TNT. This was a great disappointment and discouraged further work."
(Suppose any terrorist group would be content with 200 tons of (radioactive) explosive potential and they would likely engage into research of this bomb type.
NOTE: The 1995 Oklahoma City, OK Federal Building bombing was caused by roughly 2.5 tons of explosives.)

The link FTA and two quoted paragraphs: http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/
"Safer and Self Contained
Often referred to as a "cartridge" reactor or "nuclear battery," the Hyperion hydride reactor is self- regulating with no moving parts to break down or corrode. The inherent properties of uranium hydride serve as both fuel and moderator providing unparalleled safety among nuclear reactors.
Sealed at the factory, the module is not opened until it is time for the unit to be "refueled," approximately every five years or so by the manufacturer. This containment, along with the strategy of completely burying the module at the operating site, protects against the possibility of human incompetence, or hostile tampering and proliferation...
Hyperion is Cleaner
Because of the inherent properties of uranium hydride, Hyperion is "cleaner," producing only a tiny fraction of the waste produced by other types of reactors. Water is not used in the process, so there is no danger of pollution to local water bodies. And certainly, operation of the Hyperion reactor does not produce any greenhouse gases and allows for a cleaner atmosphere. The energy per module generated is 27 MW."

IF Water is NOT used, what is this "Steam Generation" thing mentioned? .... even heat exchangers can do eventually leak...

This device appears to be a "Sealed" 'Uranium Hydride' Nuclear Reactor with a 'Deuterium Hydrogen Isotope' moderator or partial 'Nuclear Poison' to control the spontaneous fission reaction rate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_poison

The stoichiometric chemical equation for Uranium Hydride is noteworthy: (2)UH3 = U + (3)H2
Hydrogen is Extremely Flammable in our atmosphere (Deuterium is isotopic form of Hydrogen) and so is Uranium Hydride (UH3):
"Uranium hydride is a brownish-black or brownish-gray, pyrophoric powder." http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/healthguidelines/uraniuminsolublecompounds/recognition.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrophoric
The flammability of UH3 and fuel-air detonation potential of chemically-decomposing UH3 and the Hydrogen generated was enough of a concern that the US Department Of Energy (Oak Ridge, TN) published a detailed study of the handling of UH3 in "glove box" conditions: http://www1.y12.doe.gov/search/library/documents/pdf/ydz-2351.pdf

It is possible that Hyperion Power Generation's PR "Spin" of its 'sealed portable 27 Million-Watt Nuclear Reactor' as being as safe as a common 'sealed AA battery' is incorrect.
Also, the suggestion that these devices SHOULD be used in third world countries is of great concern.

As suggested on Hyperion's web page, the use of these reactors for remote steam and electrical generation for oil extraction from Bitumen Sands IS cost-effective and DOES reduce greenhouse gases emissions for that process.
(It's a good thing that most of the Tar Sands are located in Canada and not the Middle East or Africa.) http://en.wikipedia.org/