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Toshiba Builds Ultra-Small Nuclear Reactor
DeusExCalamus writes "Toshiba has developed a new class of micro size Nuclear Reactors that is designed to power individual apartment buildings or city blocks. The new reactor, which is only 20 feet by 6 feet, could change everything for small remote communities, small businesses or even a group of neighbors who are fed up with the power companies and want more control over their energy needs."
I'm sure the US government would have no problem with people buying these, no problem at all.
There are many cleaner ways to generate electricity than nuclear. Hydro, geothermal, tidal and wave, wind and solar energy are all cleaner.
Sure, but there are plenty of areas where none of the above apply. I live in an area where that is not near any water, has only intermittent sun and wind so another power source is necessary. Geothermal looks great on paper but AFAIK there are still tech barriers involved. Nuke power is certainly better to coal or oil/gas. Coal spews more heavy metals and radioactive material into the atmosphere than nukes ever did. With fossil fuels the mess gets spread all over the planet, with nukes it all stays in one place.
If you took all the toxins, etc., from coal and condensed them on one place, the greens would have a fit no matter where you tried to bury it.
Besides, did you turn YOUR air conditioner off last summer?
Anyway, this will never fly in the US - I can guarantee that the big utilities will lobby congress and FUD it to death.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
Gee, I guess I'll be selling all my extra power to the grid.
I love it when someone from Arizona tells me that solar power is going to solve all my power problems here in northern New Hampshire.
There are many cleaner ways to generate electricity than nuclear. Hydro, geothermal, tidal and wave, wind and solar energy are all cleaner.
Depends how you define "clean" - hydro power is usually environmentally quite damaging. Tidal power can also be quite damaging if done inappropriately (I'll point at the proposed Severn Tidal Barrage as an example of how do do a lot of damage to the environment through harnessing the tides). Thermal solar based systems are probably pretty clean, but photovoltaic systems use quite a lot of rather nasty chemicals in their manufacture which must be handled carefully (kind of like fission products in fact...)
http://blog.nexusuk.org
It's definitely greener than nuclear, but we shouldn't argue about what's the greenest, as long as it's green
Not necessarily. I've seen reports that some geothermal plants are plagued with stuff like sulfer and heavy metal releases.
If you're in a spot where the Earth is conducive to it, the technology has been licked.
Then you use it where it makes sense. Meanwhile what are the rest of us in the world supposed to use?
Oh, and it's not in your post, but hydroelectric(Dams) actually do have some rather serious enviromental concerns...
I don't read AC A human right
10 years ago, this article would have abounded with threads on how cool this is, and "I wonder if you could make a Beowulf cluster of those."
Now, it's all, nuclear is bad, nuclear is evil because "The terrorists might get it".
Listen to yourselves. You've eaten the terrorist propaganda the government has been feeding you, AND YOU LOVE IT.
"We can't do this because it might help the terrorists."
"Yeah, that's cool, but what about the terrorists?"
"If it weren't for terrorists, this would be awesome."
George Bush loves you guys, he's got you on his side and you don't even realize it.
I think on of the biggest problems with the environmental movement (or at least their PR) is that they seem more than happy to pursue perfect solutions at the expense of good solutions.
I agree entirely. Although the other problem seems to be that they take a solution that might be more or less perfect, given perfect conditions/location and push it so hard they end up putting it in conditions/locations where it either doesn't work or causes a lot of damage. I'm all for installing in "renewable" power generation systems where appropriate, but I also recognise that they are often not appropriate and that fission is a pretty good solution (with appropriate handling and reprocessing facilities for the spent fuel).
Also, whilst I can forgive the general public for overreacting based on misinformation (e.g. the "nuclear is bad" attitude caused by its association with nuclear weapons, Chernobyl, etc.), it seems that the big environmental groups who attract the media's attention are often just as badly informed. For example, Greenpeace is opposed to ITER and other fusion research, stating that it is dangerous, a waste of money and that it should be spent on renewables instead. So they seem to not want research into a technology that could producer cleaner (although not completely clean) energy. Yes, we may never get useful power out of fusion reactors, but we won't know until we try - I for one am hopeful.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
There were a number of building size reactor designs proposed in the 1980s.
I once worked for a company that designed an intrinsically safe urban reactor designed to make hot water. We had convinced the city of Helsinki to buy it and were within hours of signing the contract when the Chernobyl Reactor accident occurred. Helsinki would have used it as a district heating plant big enough to heat all the buildings in the city.
Nuclear reactors are much better at making hot water than they are at making electricity. Heating is a major consumer of energy in many locations. Therefore, replacing a fossil fuel heat source with a nuclear heat source is more beneficial to the environment than replacing an electric power generator. There are other applications, aluminum smelting for example, that need copious quantities of heat, not electricity per se.