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."

Comments

Sounds familiar...

[flabbergast]

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.

We've been seeing a lot of this "safe" nukes stuff

[ahfoo]

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.

Steam? Well...

[irokitt]

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.

Re:Steam? Well...

[RsG]

Actually, in one pebble bed reactor design, a non-reactive gas is used in the heat exchangers only, steam is limited to the turbines themselves (easy to maintain that way - there is little or no corrosion among the radioactive parts). It is also possible to use recycled helium in the turbines, although IIRC it is less effecient. The advantage to a helium-only model is that He4 cannot be rendered radioactive via neutron bombardment, whereas water can (therefor there should be no liquid or gaseous waste products in a He4 design).

Re:It's not the CRT

[Anonymous Coward]

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...