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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."
Not a bad idea. And as for becoming unstable, I'm sure it's simple enough to bury the reactor such that it becomes it's own disposal site.
I'll take the 10 megawatts model for my house. I'm sure it's no bigger than an asteroid the size of a VW.
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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. :-(
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Hacking a Port-A-Nuke
Powering Laptop With a Port-A-Nuke
Building Your Own Port-A-Nuke
Now a Porn-A-Nuke?
A portable nuclear reactor? Cool! Just sling it over your back and go!
Sarcasm aside, "portable" may be stretching it for something that weight 500 metric tons. "Self-contained" would be a better term. Which would be an impressive feat if they can pull it off. Most of our existing reactors require quite a bit of supervision to ensure that they operate within expected tolerances. The safety systems should kick in if anything goes wrong, but the power going out is enough of a problem in of itself. Of course, most of our reactors are pretty old tech, so a self-contained reactor may be possible now. I think it would be kind of cool if every suburb could have one of these things.
Not sure about the whole third-world idea, though. All I can say is, it's better than letting them build their own reactors. At least with these, we'll 100% KNOW if plutonium is missing.
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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.
I can tell you that US Navy subs have had few catastophic disasters, and perhaps none at all for a long time.
So I think that is a good proof of concept for portable nuke power plants.
With the right type of manufacturing technology, one can make the fissionable material very hard to get at.
I fully support much more use of nuclear power everywhere in the world.
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Just add C4, Dynamite or Fuel and Fertilizer if you're really hard up.
Hard up for what, seeing paint scorched? The gov't is already pretty good at building reactors and transportation vessels that stand up to such attacks. The real threats are regrettably from the simple and common anti-armor weapons.
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.
Now a Porn-A-Nuke?
Also known as a very dirty bomb.
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Personally, I still think the helium-cooled pebble bed reactors would be better for long-term operation.
I can't believe that anything having to do with steam will survive 30 years without maintenance. Corrosion happens when you have water. High-pressure helium (or other unreactive noble gas) is a safer cooling solution.
Also this whole breeding plutonium thing is real proliferation risk. The article says the reactor is "tamper resistant," but I don't see why someone couldn't bore through the side of the thing and take out the fuel rods. I think a non-breeding solution would be safer.
The biggest issue with the "pebble bed" concept is the physical removal and addition of the pebbles, which is requires too many moving parts to be sealed.
Certainly you could work out some sealed solution to a long-term pebble bed only having a part of the core fissioning at any point, using some sort of neutron absorbing rods or liquid.
Too bad this story was reported on earlier.... though the placement of the reactor has changed slightly....
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.
I think that has something to do with tenuous world affairs becoming even less stable when more countries have access to nuclear weapons.
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...
Who made the United States the ruler of world affairs?
Europe. Happened in WWII when the rest of the world proved that it couldn't keep from trying to destroy itself. So the Allied powers were given certain rights, and the rest of the world was divided up into little pieces. (Germany, the Middle East, etc.) Our then ally (Russia) then immediately did an about face and became a cold war enemy. They chose to begin taking over the various countries through use of their "Communist ideals".
They then proceeded to sap up all the countries that we hadn't broken into tiny pieces, in an effort to gain more world power. The remaining European allies lacked the necessary GDP to defend against any war that Russia might start, so it was left up to the US to be the "good guys". Don't like it? Too bad. Build your own damn supercarriers, neutron bombs, and space lasers instead of sitting on your thumbs.
As for countries like Iran, Hussein's Iraq, Pakistan, etc, they were broken up for a reason. Very simply: we can't trust them as far as we can kick them. September 11 only proves that. It doesn't stop us from being friendly and trying to help these countries out, but you can bet your ass that the US and UN are not looking to allow them nuclear weapons!
You want to stop nuclear proliferation? How about starting with the United States, Israel, England, France, India...
Leave the US and England out of this. Our nuclear weapons are pretty much at the "yeah, we have some" point. A large chunk of our arsenal has been destroyed, and many of their silos abandoned. I'd say leave France out of this too, but they've had dealings with the Middle East that puts them in the spotlight.
Everyone else in the Middle East is looking to point atomic weapons at each other. Why? None of their excuses make sense to us, so we just try to keep them from lobbing any of those nukes at us or any of our allies.
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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).
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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
Reading the article linked to from /. story about pebble bed reactors would show you that the turbines are driven by helium in the primary loop. There is no secondary loop. Water can be used as precooling before the helium is recompressed, but water or steam is not required.
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As for countries like Iran, Hussein's Iraq, Pakistan, etc, they were broken up for a reason. Very simply: we can't trust them as far as we can kick them. September 11 only proves that.
Odd. You don't mention either of the two countries that actually had anything to do with September 11: Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia.
Much of the animosity we see towards the US is because we are meddling in other affairs under the premise that it is for their good while it is actually for our (the USA's) own good or profit, and when we no longer see an profitable or nice political reason to be there we leave the area to fester (see Afghanistan, actually looks like we are ramping up to do nothing again and let rise more problems).
The USA has done many great things, but we are not infallible:we are very arrogant and can be quite greedy.
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The alarming drop in standards I've seen on Slashdot lately really bothers me. Insults are critical to the Slashdot environment.
...Oh, nevermind. We should be good on insults until 2231 give or take a few years.
At this rate we're going to see a complete lack of insults within...oh..
But still it's no excuse to go slacking man. Now get back on here, call him an asshat and straighten up your postings pronto.
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