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."

Comments

No more just in one size.

[Zarhan]

Lots of advocates for solar/wind/other renewables oppose using nuclear power to help against global warming because "They come in only one size: Extra large". This one pretty much mitigates that argument. Of course, Toshiba has done this before, with the Galena project...looks like they are really pushing miniaturization of nukes.

Re:Sony

[Opportunist]

Now, now, I'm sure they replace it without a hassle. It's all in your warranty.

No, why should they be liable for the collateral damage? You get a new reactor, dammit, greedy bastards those customers...

A interesting thought

[hey!]

The claimed cost of power is $0.05/kwh.

A gallon of gasoline has something around 35kwh. 35kwh from this thing would cost you $1.75. If you had a fleet of electric vehicles, you could continually charge batteries off this thing and swap them out.

A 200kw reactor would produce the equivalent of almost 140 gallons of gasoline per day. Effectively this is more energy, if your vehicles operate in the city, because you don't expend energy idling the engine. You could operate a fleet of electric cabs, locking in the equivalent of a $1.75/gallon energy cost for the next forty years.

Re:A slogan

[Firethorn]

Good luck purchasing the enriched uranium needed to run your private building block reactor.

Toshiba manages that

Or operating the thing yourself.

No need, it's completely automated. The only thing you worry about is putting water in one end and running the steam through the turbine on the other.

It's an interesting technology, but the chances of having one of these for your apartment are not very good.

It'd be expensive overkill, yes. Now, a few for the local military base... I mean, they already have highly enriched uranium buried all over the place...

Might as well save a few million(and let the local coal plant off the hook a bit).

Wait a second...

Let's say that this is a large apartment complex. 200 apartments. Each apartment averages ~8 amps, 1kw each. At 10 cents per kwh, that's $73 each, average bill*. We buy/sell electricity to the grid to balance load just like most people with solar panels(net metering). Selling electricity at 10 cents a kw/h to our tenants is more than enough to cover the cost of the plant. Heck, we break even if we can sell it to the power company at 5 cents.

Still, this reactor system isn't going to be 100% efficient at turning heat into electricity. Since we have the heat source on site, we build a trigeneration plant instead of a straight electricity generator that also heats the water for use in the apartments, runs a building heat system of some sort, and utilizes an absorbtion cooler to provide AC.

This should allow me to sell electricity to my tenants and the grid to cover the cost of the reactor, and provide heating & cooling to by tenants for essentially the cost of the generation equipment. Heating and cooling can easily equal the electricity cost, so the potential profit is high. At the very least, the lower costs would allow me to offer a lower rent price to keep the apartments full while still offering perks such as 'heat, AC, and hot water included!'.

*Just assume that they're running around with inefficient electric appliances and use their electric stove a lot.

Mostly ridiculous article

[Ancient_Hacker]

Hmm, yet another mostly ridiculous article, if you know anything about nuclear technology.

• Reactors don't scale down very well. The surface area (through which you lose neutrons) goes down slower than the volume (which creates the neutrons). Anything below a Fermi-1 size reactor, you need enriched uranium ($$$$$$). For a car-sized reactor, you need highly enriched uranium ($$$$$$$$$$$). That's not only expensive as heck, but a bomb-maker's dream. LIthium as a reflector helps some, but not al that much, and has its downside too.
• A few small reactors have been made. One scaled-down model for the NR-1 submarine cost about $60 million, and puts out almost 80 horsepower. Another scaled down one, for the Artic, called the SL-1, cost a bit less, but did not last very long, even with continuous maintenance, and finally blew up real good, (probably due to a careless Joe).
• You need at least a couple skilled engineers, not to mention a few guards, to deploy a power station. Not exactly economical for a power plant that only makes a few dollars per hour of electricity.
• A small reactor, especially one without a thick containment, is going to be easy pickings for terrorists. A thick containment dome is surprisingly expensive, making the alleged cheapness of the basic reactor quite irrelevant.
• Technologies like "Pebble bed" and "intrinsically safe" reactors have been the stuff of Popular Science magazine for decades now. Not likely any of them will get built any time soon, for many very good reasons.

Re:Eh...

[vadim_t]

Wonderful deal, isn't it?

Iran only has to build expensive reactors, and buy the fuel from the US (or whoever provides it) which will of course be sold at a profit (so it's not exactly a huge concession on the provider's part)

That'd work right until the provider decides it doesn't like something going on and says "No more fuel for you!".

Then what happens is that Iran gets rolling blackouts, and gets stuck with lots of expensive hardware they can't use, because if they had enough power without the reactors they wouldn't be building them in the first place.

Yes, I don't understand why anybody wouldn't sign up for a great deal like that.