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Port-A-Nuke
Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) are designing a self-contained, tamper-resistant nuclear reactor that can be transported and installed anywhere in the world. In 'US plans portable nuclear power plants,' New Scientist writes that the sealed reactors would last 30 years and deliver between 10 and 100 megawatts. The largest version would be about 15 meters high and 3 meters wide, with a weight of about 500 tons, allowing for transportation by ships or very large trucks. The DOE thinks that this kind of nuclear reactor -- named SSTAR for 'small, sealed, transportable, autonomous reactor' -- would help to deliver nuclear energy to developing countries while significantly reducing the risk of nuclear proliferation associated with the use of nuclear power. What do you think of this idea? Is it a good one or a crazy one? Leaving a nuclear reactor in a developing country which can potentially become unstable during the 30 years of service of the reactor doesn't seem to be terribly safe.
Read more before deciding. Anyway, there will be no prototypes before 2015."
I knew this sounded familiar. Its even at New Scientist.
Mini nuclear reactor could power apartment blocks
With that said, I don't know how similar these two technologies are. But, smaller reactors seem to be an active area of research.
This was the original idea back in the 1950s for the future of nuclear power. People would buy their own power stations to put in their yards to generate power. But power companies were against this [no money to make] and people were in an uproar about safety issues
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"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
What is being called safe is the cooling systems and other issues involved with a properly functioning system. What none of these are addressing is that a proplerly functioning nuclear fission plant produces wastes that need to be disposed of and those disposal costs are not being calculated in these reportedly cheap price tags.
This is a very serious accounting issue and a firm that tries to play this kind of accounting game deserves to be busted for fraud.
Notice they said "tamper-resistant" not "tamper-proof".This is just like in armor manufacturing, where there is no such thing as a "bulletproof" vest or a "bulletproof" door; there are bullet resistant things, but nothing can be entirely "proofed" from bullets or tampering.
If a seemingly "unupgradable" and unassuming iMac can be overclocked, then the cask can be broken.
If a supposedly "rock-solid" DRM can be defeated by depressing the shift key, then the alarms can be neutralized.
If the entire east coast of North America's power can be shut off by a single local power outage, then the coolant can be blocked.
10 Bits= $.25
100 Bits= $.50
110 Bits= $.75
1000 Bits= 1 byte
Be pretty hard to generate electricity without steam. Whether the reactor is a pebble-bed helium-moderated design or a "traditional" pressurized water-moderated design, the only purpose of a nuclear reactor is to generate heat, heating water to produce steam, which then turns a turbine to generate electricity. Either design you mention requires steam.
Perhaps your confused about how the primary loop-the water that comes into contact with the fuel elements-works. That water is under pressure, and does not turn into steam. There is a secondary loop, which passes through a heat exchanger with the primary loop, and it is this secondary loop that is converted to steam to turn the turbine. The secondary loop is not radioactive.
Pebble-bed reactors are promising because they have a potential to solve a lot of the problems that a PWR reactor has. But both reactors require steam.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
Check out the new spiral ones in Home Depot or Lowes. They satisfy all three of your requirements. and fit in a standard incandescent light bulb socket.
I replaced every light bulb in my house with these. They are more expensive up front but they last forever (4 years and counting) and my electric bill has dropped by about 40%.
DEFINITELY worthwhile.
nos laetus epulor qui would domito nos
You seem utterly clueless.
The power rating of the PSU is how much power it *can deliver*, not how much it will drain from the grid just because you plug it in.
And fans draw practically no power at all, maybe one or two watts, so I don't see why you drag them into the discussion...
Just an addendum:
m l
The wired article talking about pebble bed reactors (in particular a type developed by the chinese to be modular, easy to produce, and apparently cluster) can be found online at http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.09/china.ht
Look out honey cause I'm usin' technology
Ain't got time to make no apologies
10 megawatts is 13,410.2209 horsepower. 1 million pounds. 0.0134 hp per lbs.
.55 hp per lbs.
The 250hp engine in my truck weighs about 450lbs. Thats 186,425 watts, or
I'm not sure why the post was moderated as Interesting, since I assume it was a joke, but a lot of people don't realize a modern car engine puts out a hundred or more kilowatts peak.
The only problem I can think of is that you can't (as far as I know) use them with a dimmer switch. I do think they're great and I make a point of using them in places where the light is often on for hours and hours, e.g. the kitchen.
Its a slow fission system that uses a neutron reflecting shield that gradually (over 30 years) descends via gravity over the material. The neutrons bounce back into the fissile material thus creating fission. The shield descends at the rate it takes to consume the fuel (a long time)
The benefit of this is if for some reason the shield stops moving, the worse that would happen is fission would cease entirely at some point, rather than run away.
Or so my understanding goes.
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HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
The thing is that conservation is not worthwhile to the average American, from an economic perspective. Conservation and power efficiency in home devices and appliances often require a larger up-front cost, and only pay out their savings over an extended period of time. If energy became more expensive, things would change, but right now, it's worth it for average Joe to use his power-sucking appliances. Any damage to the environment or stuff to that effect is an externality which he is not feling at the moment.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
USS Thresher and USS Scorpion were lost at sea. USS Guitarro sank alongside a pier during construction for reasons that can only be described as Really Dumb, but was refloated and repaired.
No US subs have been lost since the 1970s, though.
Which is why the reactor plans call for a GPS unit that phones home if tampered with. RTFA.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
The Chinese pebble design, reported on a day or two ago, sounds safer. This seems to be the conventional design which can overheat and partially self destruct. The pebble design OTOH cools rapidly enough you can turn cooling off catastrophically and the fuel elements do not melt. (When moderator geometry is disturbed, the reaction stops in either case, but the pebble design has enough surface area that the melting point of the fuel is not reached. Current US designs OTOH melt leaving a mess. Actually I hope the pebble design replaces many of our existing power plants. It produces no carbon dioxide, and one of the side effects is it splits considerable water into hydrogen and oxygen, giving a very nice source of the latter.
As a matter of fact, I already *do* make liberal use of comapct flourescent replacements for regular lightbulbs - but they're not always viable. The biggest problem I have with them is they don't seem to be designed to stand up to the levels of heat they put out. They're not recommended for use in enclosed fixtures. (I tried it once anyway, in a couple ceiling lights in my kitchen. After only a few weeks, one of the flourescent bulbs started turning itself on and off every 30 seconds or so. I took it out and found its white plastic case had turned brownish - and it was obviously failing from the heat. A second one started exhibiting the same symptoms shortly afterwards, so I went back to regular 60 watt bulbs.)
The "100 watt + vs. 30 watt LCD monitor" suggestion isn't that sensible either, really. If you have a good CRT (like my Sony Trinitron 21"), where's the sense in disposing of it to save some watts of power? You're creating a big waste disposal issue from the lead in the glass and paying a big price premium for LCD technology that will take longer to recoup in energy savings than the panel is likely to last.
Honestly, attempts to guilt computer users into putting up with slower CPU speeds or twisting their arms to purchase specific technologies are not going to solve our country's power problems.
Most modern systems have all sorts of power savings/management features built into them already - including "sleep" and "suspend" modes, processors that step down to slower CPU speeds whenever they're idle, and so on.
Hated it, BTW.
My website url above gives some of my thoughts about the nuke boats.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
The reason I haven't converted my bedroom is that the compact floresent bulbs do have a 1 to 2 second startup delay
The latest generation of florescents have no warm up delay. Much less annoying. Sylvania, among others, make such bulbs.
bulb info