Portable Nuclear Battery in the Development Stages

Xight writes "The Santa Fe Reporter has up an article about a portable nuclear reactor, about the size of a hot tub. Despite it's 'small' size the company that is planning to develop the product (Hyperion Power Generation), claims it could power up to 25,000 homes. 'Though it would produce 27 megawatts worth of thermal energy, Hyperion doesn't like to think of its product as a reactor. It's self-contained, involves no moving parts and, therefore, doesn't require a human operator. "In fact, we prefer to call it a 'drive' or a 'battery' or a 'module' in that it's so safe," Hyperion spokeswoman Deborah Blackwell says. "Like you don't open a double-A battery, you just plug [the reactor] in and it does its chemical thing inside of it. You don't ever open it or mess with it."' If all goes according to plan, Hyperion could have a factory in New Mexico by late 2012, and begin producing 4,000 of these reactors."

Comments

Chemical Thing

[ShakaUVM]

Anyone else find this quote troubling: "Like you don't open a double-A battery, you just plug [the reactor] in and it does its chemical thing inside of it. You don't ever open it or mess with it."'

A chemical reaction is not a nuclear reaction. I think that any company that doesn't understand this difference shouldn't really be in the business of making portable nuclear reactors.

I'm sure people here will have any number of criticisms to the idea of a portable nuclear reactor, but it's actually a very old concept. The arctic early-warning radar systems back in the cold war days had truck-sized nuclear reactors developed for them.

Re:Perfect thing to fit on a truck to ram somewher

[jacquesm]

> I believe radioactivity is a great way to generate electricity.

And I don't. It's as simple as that. Spreading out radioactive materials all over the globe in an attempt to generate power when power is available in much less dangerous forms to me seems like a stupid thing to do. The sun puts about 1KW / square metre on the ground at full illumination, wind power is available in vast quantities. And yes, there are literally 100's of thousands of people involved in industries today to make power generated by these renewable sources cheaper, more reliable and more plentiful.

The French have a lot of nuclear power, that is true. They also have a pretty serious nuclear waste problem.

To take any objection against nuclear power as 'fear mongering' is a cheap way of stifling debate. If my neighbour had a baby nuclear generator in his basement I'd move. No matter how 'safe' it was said to be. Nuclear power is not 'safe' by any stretch of the (my?) imagination. Anything that needs a containment vessel with lots of shielding is not safe, period. And that's a different kind of 'not safe' than say an LPG tank. Sure, the LPG tank can go *boom* just the same, but after it does that the remainder is inert, not much more dangerous than the original tank.

Terrorism is mostly a media affair, it's a love triangle between the media, the terrorists and the politicians. Fear mongering is to artificially exaggerate the risks associated with a certain technology, and as far as I'm concerned there are serious risks associated with nuclear technology. Spreading it far and wide will give at least one of the three parties in the above mentioned triangle a hard to resist temptation. That is not a very good thing either.

One the one hand you have fear mongering, the Ostriches (sp?) are on the other end of the spectrum. To completely deny the risks of nuclear tech is not a realistic point of view, neither is a total panic about it. Somewhere in the middle lies realism, if a technology has inherent dangers or risks associated with it then you try to control it as much as you can to minimize those risks & dangers.