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

Re:Spokesperson without a clue

[transwarp]

"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." Uh huh... Nuclear reactions are not chemical in nature... spokesperson without a clue.

I figured that she meant the battery and was still using the metaphor, and the article's author assumed she was talking about the reactor and put it in brackets. At least, I'd rather believe a reporter made that mistake than the spokesperson for a nuclear power company.

Re:Fakey McFake

[PaintyThePirate]

What was your first clue, the fact that the power cable coming out would have to be half the diameter of the device to power 25,000 homes? Leave the electrical engineering to the electrical engineers. You also missed the crucial fact that electricity does not come out of a reactor, heat does. To get electricity, you have to use the heat on some fluid to drive a turbine. The turbine obviously would not be inside this "washing machine".

It is also pretty apparent that you've never seen a nuclear reactor. A reactor itself is pretty small compared to the overall size of a plant. It's the cooling loops, turbines, myriad of control and power equipment, and containment structure that take up space.