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

A slogan

[suso]

Have a fallout, closer to home. Toshiba Micro Nuclear.

Re:A slogan

[cozziewozzie]

There are many cleaner ways to generate electricity than nuclear. Hydro, geothermal, tidal and wave, wind and solar energy are all cleaner.

Re:A slogan

[aurispector]

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.

Re:A slogan

[FireFury03]

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...)

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.

Re:A slogan

[Firethorn]

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...

Re:A slogan

[FireFury03]

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.

Re:A slogan

[Pollardito]

I live in an area where that is not near any water, has only intermittent sun and wind so another power source is necessary. these problems are among many that go away when you move out of your parents' basement

Re:A slogan

[dgatwood]

Even when they do apply, that's at least partially wrong. Hydro power is about as un-green as you can get. It does more environmental damage than coal.

Traditional hydro power blocks rivers, which causes problems for fish migration. Hydro power creates pools of water where plant matter dies, releasing large amounts of methane, which contributes directly to global warning. And so on. Hydro power is really relatively nasty stuff. It's fine if you already have a dam for flood control reasons and are just taking advantage of the water flow, but otherwise, it's generally a bad idea.

Solar power is also nasty, at least if you're talking about photovoltaic cells (the only type of solar power practical for anyone but large power companies). The chemicals used to produce the cells are really horrible for the environment. There are cleaner cell chemistries on the horizon, but AFAIK, nothing in mass production yet. The giant solar tower designs don't have that problem, though they are impractical except for large installations and require substantial energy storage to provide power at night. Depending on the energy storage mechanism used, that can be pretty nasty environmentally as well. If they do use a clean storage mechanism, though, such as storing heated water underground, it is relatively green. Notice, though, that with so many "ifs", a large chunk of solar power isn't green at all.

Wind power, bird risks notwithstanding, is relatively green.

Nuclear power is also relatively green. Its only emission is water vapor, which quickly settles out of the atmosphere. The nuclear material, while a waste product, was radioactive on the way in, too. You aren't really producing nuclear waste. You are simply taking advantage of a natural process that would occur inside the ground and harnessing it for power by bringing it up out of the ground. By any sane standard, it is every bit as green as wind power.

Another one you didn't mention is tidal power. This is pretty different from traditional hydro power, and is generally considered to be fairly environmentally sound, AFAIK. It is also limited to coastal regions, which makes it pretty much useless in large percentages of the world, but it's a start. :-)

Someone should have told the students

[LiquidCoooled]

Someone should have told these students that they could get one of these and not have to peddle.

Incredible.

[Spazntwich]

How did they manage to shrink a nuclear reactor to only two dimensions?

Re:Incredible.

[Firethorn]

20 feet high, 6 feet in diameter.

Oh, and this is old. I believe it was around 3 years ago that I first heard of this. They were talking about installing one in a remote village up in Alaska that gets all it's power from diesel because it'd be too expensive to connect it to the grid it's so far away.

Then the greenies* heard about it and killed it. The villagers were pretty much all for it.

*Can't really call them NIMBY, unless they count the entire planet their backyard in this case.

Re:Incredible.

[Broken scope]

Actually i think a few layers of lead paint on the sucker wouldn't be such a bad idea.

Yup

[FictionPimp]

I'm sure the US government would have no problem with people buying these, no problem at all.

this should be great news to MIT

[Albert Sandberg]

now they don't have to rely on bicycles for the supercomputer energy needs!

Sony

[Anonymous Coward]

Have a fallout, closer to home. Toshiba Micro Nuclear. Hopefully Sony doesn't get into this business. If you thought exploding laptop batteries were bad, wait until you get a Sony exploding nuclear reactor.

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...

Re:Sony

[Poltras]

No, why should they be liable for the collateral damage? You get a new reactor, dammit, greedy bastards those customers... That's Mr. Mutant Customer to you, sir.

Re:Sony

[jcgf]

Wuss.

Re:Sony

[sqldr]

It's not the size, it's the giger that counts!

I'll get my coat.

Re:Sony

[A nonymous Coward]

I will not ask how you managed to ski downhill, either.

Duhhhh. It was uphill both ways.

ominous

[mincognito]

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

I think that's the worry.

Cannot Find

[russ1337]

I heard about this yesterday, and searched the Toshiba's main website for a press release or anything. I found nothing beyond the article. If Toshiba are really doing this, i thought it would at least be a headliner on their website.

Anyone?? I'm wondering if this is even real.

my search here (you may have to filter for medical results)

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:Lifetime cost

[slashqwerty]

40 years x 365 days x 24 hours x 200kW x $0.05 = $3.5bn

I think you're off by a factor of 1000. I get $3.5 million. That's far more practical. You're numbers come out to $50/kWh.

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:Fuel

[AtomicJake]

TFA says it'll use lithium-6

But Lithium-6 is stable, i.e. not radioactive. It can be used to produce Tritium by neutron activation, which in turn is used in thermonuclear weapons. But for Neutron activation you need another radioactive source. So, what's this source? Or is Toshiba using a totally different process?

I doubt that these are properties of an export hit ...

Are you kidding?

[professorguy]

Why don't you come out to my house and install your solar panels on my roof? I'm sure it will be no problem that they are under a few feet of snow for 4 months a year. Or that we get 50 sunny days (on average) a year, half of which are when we have snow. Or that at 44 degrees north, even at the solstice at high noon we have low wattage/area.

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.

Warning...

[Pedrito]

I got one of these and, honestly, it only puts out about 180 kilowatts out of the box. I managed to overclock it to 250 kilowatts, however. I just finished the case mod. I'm using plexiglass so you can see what's going on inside. It also weighs a lot less without all the lead, which was pretty unattractive. But now Toshiba is saying I voided my warranty and won't give me tech support. I just want to find out why my dog started glowing in the dark...

small reactors have been built before

[savuporo]

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf82.html

So the USSR, US and french have designed and built small spaceworthy reactors before. Some of these things have flown on actual space missions, particularly the russian Topaz-I system, weighing only 320kg.

They even built and tested nuclear powered aircraft both in US and USSR
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_aircraft

Wonder why it never went anywhere ?

Re:small reactors have been built before

[caffiend666]

Because one of the test teams died miserable deaths: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1 . They found one engineer pinned to the roof several days later.... "The third man was not discovered for several days because he was pinned to the ceiling above the reactor by a control rod. On 9 January, in relays of two at a time, a team of eight men, allowed no more than 65 seconds exposure each, used a net and crane arrangement to recover his body.

The bodies of all three were buried in lead-lined caskets sealed with concrete and placed in metal vaults with a concrete cover. All had major physical injuries, including severed limbs and fragments of the fuel assembly in their wounds. Richard Leroy McKinley is buried in section 31 of Arlington National Cemetery."

The radiation levels were too high for the rescue teams to get near the reactor and figure out what happened. After they recovered one body, they use the radation levels of his body and the rare isotopes they found on his possessions (Gold 198 anyone?) to prove the reactor had gone super critical.

Much nuclear space research was put on hold after the effects of the Starfish Prime experiment were understood.

Re:Fuel

[Anonymous Coward]

6Li is a neutron absorber. Its advantage is that it produces essentially no gamma radiation, as the dominant channel is 6Li(n,T). Tritium is produced, but in a reactor like this it will presumably be all inside the seals. The alternative shielding material, 10B, produces gammas as well, requiring lead shielding.

The lithium is a regulator and shielding component of the reactor, not a fuel. It'll be fuelled by moderately enriched uranium, much like a Slowpoke.

Interesting fact: 40% of electricity generated in Canada is lost to transmission lines and conversions. One of the big gains from tech like this would be the reduction in transmission losses.

The radical change of Slashdot

[whoda]

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.

More info

[Xelios]

After crawling the web a bit I found a few more interesting links about Toshiba's "Micro-Nuke" technology. First an article from 2005 about a similar Toshiba reactor running on liquid Sodium that was slated to be installed in a remote Alaskan village some time before 2010. This doesn't appear to be the same reactor as mentioned here on /.

A blog entry with more information and links about this and other small reactors.

It seems to be fairly safe, though I can't imagine the red tape they'll have to get through in order to begin installing them, especially in North America. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the US has about a 60 month process to certify a reactor from the time the application is filed, Toshiba probably has a head start on this application from 2005 with its "4S" mini-reactor, but this new Lithium version will probably need its own application process. They plan to build these things at least 30m underground, encased in steel and concrete walls that probably put most bank vaults to shame, so I don't think tampering will be a major issue.

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.

Article author shouldn't embellish

[Quintin Stone]

Unlike traditional nuclear reactors the new micro reactor uses no control rods to initiate the reaction.

Anyone who knows anything about nuclear reactors knows that control rods certainly do not initiate reactions. They regulate or halt it by absorbing the neutrons that cause it. Maybe the author at "Next energy news" should become a bit more familiar with his/her subject before writing about it.

Nuclear Even Better For Non-electric Uses

[anorlunda]

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.

Instruction manual

[sinktank]

I can just imagine the operating manaul:

"Thank you to use Nuclear-Friend. The main characteristic in machine of control rod moves in with slim middle, can nimble neutron dependable work send, of via sea warmness thusly turbine twist out machine-wind.

ALERTNESS, magnet-imprison with ionisation threatening badass. Fleeting bioluminescence in bird appendage observation, conjunction Cherenkov neon likeness, linking chain of no command (barking!) to blinking indications. Personages of vicinity ascending fucking with sparks! Ability detriment remove with "fast-neutron-sheilding-blanket" (slowly neutrons with alacrity) to mammalian sex babylove machine faulty. As packing box inside includes dosimeter for life-spirit guard dog is. Un-normal witness with e=mc2 of cloudy fungus c.10km bigness, warranty glue not connected."

Re:Wikipedia has more info about it

[SixFactor]

Spy,

To address your points:

"...uranium is kept in small pebbles made of graphite, which is a neutron reflector material."

Technically, graphite is a neutron moderator, to allow the neutrons to slow down and interact with other nuclei in the fuel matrix. The Chicago Pile 1 used the graphite bricks as the moderator matrix. The downside of graphite is that if a graphite fire starts, it's very difficult to put out. So the pebble bed isn't quite the ideal, IMHO.

"Both reactor designs have a "negative temperature coefficient of reactivity" simply means that an increase in core temperature will cause a decrease in core power. "

This is but one part of current regulatory requirements. The General Design Criteria govern the design of nuclear plants in general, and cores in particular. The downside of having too strong of a negative temperature coefficient is that in an overcooling scenario, you get the opposite effect. This is why Main Steam Line Breaks are considered in the core design.

"More interesting facts: pebble-bed reactors use helium as coolant instead of water..."

Personally, I've always liked the gas-cooled (especially He) reactors. BTW, this has been done before at Fort St. Vrain in Colorado. Unfortunately, because it was a first of a kind (here in the US, anyway), it was plagued by more mundane issues, like seal leakage, etc. Nothing catastrophic, but a pain in the ass operationally.

Sodium on the other had was intended to minimize the impact of metal corrosion. Think about it: with a liquid metal coolant, the fuel, piping, etc. would maintain integrity pretty well. The bad thing is that yes, Na is a dangerous thing to deal with - especially on a large scale. The Experimental Breeder Reactor in Idaho was one such, I think. This is where a lot of the operational problems were discovered.

We learn by doing.

Hope this helps.