Slashdot Mirror
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."
Leaving a nuclear reactor in a developing country
I trust this means stable and reasonably secure developing country. Some of us have learned some things in the last few years. Some of us have learned a lot in the last 72 hours. :-(
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Considering my last power bill, these bigger and faster CPUs really need some juice and if you go multicore and such, you may not be exaggerating. All this bitching about nuclear power being safe, pollution from Coal and Gas plants, how ineffective Solar or Wind are -- doesn't anyone realize we're using more electrical power than ever before? Even when we have vaccum tube TV's?
Looking at the octopi at work and around home it seems my next house should have powerstrips along the walls, not just outlets.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Do you want this thing out and about?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I think it could be easily abused. There are warlords in Africa that already use their control over the power to control the people. They shut off electricity and plumbing whenever they feel like the people aren't obeying. Power is civilization, but he who controls the power, controls the civilization, which is not generally a good thing.
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
This is a great idea. The awful truth is that we can build stable, non-bomb-making reactors (pebble bed reactors, for instance) and the loonie left won't even consider it. Give a pebble bed reactor to a city and if the terrorists get it they get... uh... free electricity for a few years. Or a silo full of hot graphite tennis balls that would kill someone... if you hit him with them hard enough.
"Wow. Now THAT'S a lot of angry Indians." - Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer
This is so idiotic that we are still in the mindset of NEEDING more energy! we need to be focusing on distributed energy creation using renewable especially in the developing countries. They have an opportunity that our country does not have because of our heavy need on foreign oil.. Maybe they can be smarter than us on energy.
Are they using pebble-bed reactors? Seriously. This sounds like it's just begging for trouble. Armor and alarms won't mean much if it's the local what-passes-for-government decides it wants it's hands on (what it assumes to be) fissile material.
"To pass through the jungle; silence, courtesy, ferocity, as the occasion demands." -- Kamau, "Proper Passage"
Don't most reactors keep their waste on-site because the g00berment is still fucking around with waste site proposals? If there's no method of disposal yet, then it's pretty hard to include it in the price. Not to mention the actual disposal won't happen for 30 years - technology and costs can change quite a bit in that time.
Opportunity knocks. Karma hunts you down.
Actually, depending on the cost, why not deploy these in our own country? Especially if they are safe.
Cheers,
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
100+ watt CRT versus 30 watt LCD monitor; 100 watt incandescent light bulbs versus 25 watt compact fluorescent. These technologies are readily available, are in many states are now economical alternatives. So use them!
The tech industry is also obsessed with high performance chips that have power consumption through the roof (most of it waste, of course). Where's the direction toward more energy efficient processing alternatives? Most applications do not need 1 GHz processors.
I wonder how many active systems are in this module, such as cooling, moderation, turbine, etc. What happens when a part breaks? Maybe it's built very redundantly so breakage only decreases the capacity.
Does the unit make electricity or just steam? Does it contain any computers? What are the odds of needing a software upgrade sometime in the next 30 years? If there's a path for software updates, could someone write a malicious control software that causes a meltdown or something?
If the US is smart, they'll incorporate some kind of cryptographic leash into this thing. It could require monthly "operating licenses" from the US to continue functioning.
I didn't understand how the unit protects against extraction of plutonium. The article mentions a "thicket of alarms", but what happens when the alarms go off? You have to assume the local government wants to extract the plutonium. Maybe a shaped charge blows the reactor core to smithereens if the housing is penetrated. That would frustrate (or rather kill) would-be bomb makers, but create an environmental disaster around the reactor.
It's not the CRT, look at your freaking PSU, how many watts is that sucker? Why do you need 1 fan for CPU, 1 fan for GPU, 1 fan PSU and possibly a few more to move more air through to move air through the box. Heck, mine might as well say HOOVER on the front.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I don't believe that's the same reactor. Toshiba didn't say that they'd actually built a critical reactor. Instead they called theirs a "nuclear battery" that produced a constant 900C of heat. It's quite possible that Toshiba's model was simply radioisotope powered (i.e. RTG), or maybe it was a simple fission pile. Either one could produce a lot of heat and electricity WITHOUT actually running in a critical state. (as with normal reactors).
I'm sure someone will come along and provide more details and insult me in a few moments.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Yet the plants we do have, 103 of them in 31 states, produce 20% of our electricity requirements.
At Chernobyl, in the worst possible nuclear accident, in the worst possible place, with the worst possible safegauards, staffing, and reaction to the crisis:
31 people died (most of them heroically) on site at the time of the accident
after all this time, only 10 deaths from thyroid cancer can be attributed to this accident.
We should be producing these port-a-nukes and putting them 2500 feet underground with wires sticking out every 500sq miles in this country!
Or we could wait till gas hits 5 dollars per gallon like in Europe.
I bet if we had over 100% electrical capacity covered by non-oil, non-coal fired power plants, all of our lives would be better.
And our Middle East foreign policy would be greatly improved if they didn't have anything we wanted. Things aren't going well at the negotiating table? Screw house of Saud and walk away.
In that context, what Middle Eastern country would want to be a "state sponsor of terroism."
We shouldn't be giving this stuff away to countries until all of our needs are met here. At best, they will only hate us slightly less for patronizing them.
Are we somehow obligated to prop up their governmental "bad ideas" while we fail to deal with our own? Why, cause we have money? Tell Bill Gates that he is required to buy lemonade from my kid because, relative to him, my family is "disadvantged." AND he should do it till he is poor and I am not.
Mod me troll, I am still right.
...But I digress. TREMBLE PUNY HUMANS!ONE DAY MY SPECIES WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!
"...better than letting them" What arrogance. Why, pray tell, should the United States and the current nuclear club be the only countries to develop nuclear power? Or - yes - even nuclear weapons. Who made the United States the ruler of world affairs?
You want to stop nuclear proliferation? How about starting with the United States, Israel, England, France, India...
It is the main short coming of "it's so simple" environmental/conservation arguments that they often ignore the costs which are less obvious.
Boys from the City. Not yet caught by the Whirlwind of Progress. Feed soda pop to the thirsty pigs.
Perhaps I'm showing my unorthidox leftist leanings here but I really don't think of this as a political issue. I think of it as an environmental issue.
The US has not properly disposed of one ounce of high level nuclear reactor waste ever. We are storing it until a safe disposal facility is built. There are a lot of politics surrounding that with Nevada being the loser. Yucca mountain is really far from complete and may never be finished if the opponents win when they have their day in court.
If the US can not properly dispose of the waste, how can we expect a developing nation to do so?
The US has had Three Mile Island and Russia has had Chernobyl. Both of these countries have significant resources to bring to bear against the problem but have suffered the consiquences of accidents. How could Hati, Trinidad, or some other less sophisticated, resource poor nation deal? The answer is pretty obvious. If something goes wrong, they couldn't. And we probably couldn't get there in time.
Chernobyl was designed to be "accident proof" if anything went wrong, the pile would quench itself.
Three Mile Island was designed with multiple redundant safety systems and was manned by skilled engineers around the clock.
Can we really believe that these machines are so well engineered that they can withstand thirty years of use without an accident?
You say an American who doesn't want a nuke in their backyard is braindead? A nuke in my backyard would take about 200,000 grand of the value of my house and the houses in my neighborhood. A house, a peice of property is an investment just like any other. I may have "not in my backyard syndrome" but I sure as hell am not braindead. Putting a nuclear powerplant in my area would cost me quite a lot of money, safe or not.
What signature defines me as a person?
Why, pray tell, should the United States and the current nuclear club be the only countries to develop nuclear power?
How about because most of the nations outside of the club have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The US through the UN is only trying to hold them to what they have agreed too. If a country wants to withdraw from the treaty, they can. Look at North Korea. But they also become a pariah nation, and are subject to attack by nations whose security is threatened. Iran is headed down the same road. It is not fair or egalitarian for the countries without nukes. But it is stable.
an ill wind that blows no good
Everything you listed is true for standard fluorescents, not compact ones. I think you've never given them a fair try. I HATE standard fluorescent lights, but have 75% compact fluorescents at home.
This isn't a reply to the parent, but to most of the comments so far...
For the love of god! Why is it that the second anything has the possibility of being shipped outside of North America and Europe it will automatically fall into the terrorists hands.
For 9/11 they stole American planes in America! if they are going to do something of that scale again, you can pretty much bet your ass they will steal/use something that is already in America.
100+ watt CRT versus 30 watt LCD monitor;
Purchase prices between the two alone vastly outweigh immediate electricity costs. Throw in possibility of dead pixels, etc, and LCDs really aren't the best investment.
100 watt incandescent light bulbs versus 25 watt compact fluorescent.
Flourescent lights just suck. I lived with them for 3 years in my last apartment. I only had carbon filament lights in my bathroom and my kitchen. The flourescent lights always needed to "warm up" and even then I never felt like there was adequate light for anything. I had two in a room that was 13x16.
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
One word: Cost.
While energy efficient products still cost more, there will be less people using them. I can buy a 100w light globe for 50c (AUD), yet an energy saver one will cost me $12.
That is why they're not used all over the place.
Sendmail is like emacs: A nice operating system, but missing an editor and a MTA.
You want rid of the spent fuel? Grind it up fine, mix it with coal, and it will blend in with the ash from a coal-fired power plant. Per megawatt-hour, coal plants put more radioactive material into the environment than nuclear plants produce.
~Idarubicin
Hard up for what, seeing paint scorched?
Wrong. The concern isn't that attackers will toss a bomb at the reactor, but that they will seize the reactor, dismantle it, and use the radioactive fuel (which is otherwise difficult to obtain) as the payload for a dirty bomb.
Current nuclear reactors are unlikely to be seized by a handful of armed men, because they are either large complexes in civilized nations, or onboard military ships. The project will encourage the placement of reactors in poorer, less controlled countries, where a squad of militants can move rather freely.
When I learned about the reactors aboard submarines, how they're built and how they're run my next thought was that we should make civilian power plants the same way. I'm not exactly a cheerleader for the Navy but, from what I've seen, I do think that they are a good example of how to run a nuclear power program.
Small, standardized, modular, portable, self-contained plants that could be added easily to a power grid, refueled at one central location and disposed of in its own container seem to be the most obvious sway to proceed with nuclear energy. Yes, the front end cost may be higher but in the long run, its a better way to go.
"In a hierarchy every employee will rise to his level of incompetence". The Peter Principle
The original point was that WE don't need more energy. The reply states that maybe WE don't need more energy, but third world areas who do not have a reliable connection to a first world grid do.
So Roland Piquepaille asks in the article,
As if one of the largest arsenals of nuclear weapons in the world in the hands of religious fundamentalists in the US was not more worrisome.
Arrogance / Ignorance?
http://stephan.sugarmotor.org
Uh, maybe just sleep with the lights on?
This seems like a "where do we put the definition" question. All the energy going into a CPU ends up as heat. Because the "work" it does turns into heat, too. But it does do some stuff, too.
Take a lightbulb-- the normal way to think about efficiency is "how much of the energy is made into light vs. heat." The original poster would seem to suggest that it all ends up as heat, because as soon as the light hits something, it's just going to warm it up. Just like the CPU-- it does some number crunching... but moving those electrons around in there just ends up making heat after we're done crunching, too. It's just that with the CPU, this step is done before we leave the CPU. The CPU is like a lightbulb in a box. The lightbulb does make light-- but from the view outside the box, all the energy you put in is becoming heat.
At 500 (or 200 or whatever >100) ton, the trouble is no longer in the engine, but in the brakes.
I want to see you stop a 200ton vehicle driving 70mph.
Whoah boy, watch out with that inertia, will ya ?
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
i think the parent's point was that, in a developing country, where there's no (or little) existing infrastructure, we should be teaching them to develop cleaner, more renewable sources of energy, rather than just dumping a nuclear reactor on them. granted, this is still better than dumping a coal plant, but there must be better alternatives.
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.
Heh, thanks a lot for your post. Now the entire first page, using the default threaded mode, is talking about power supplies and fluroescent lights ;)
I'm you from the future! We have to finish our time machine before the Angels of Destruction find the portal!
But does your truck run for 30 years without refueling?
For us carnivores, "Sucking the marrow out of life" isn't a transcendentalist philosophy but a practical instruction.
So why don't we just grind nuclear waste into a fine powder and distribute it evenly onto a desert or ocean or something?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz