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Robert X Cringely Predicts More Mininuke Plants

Posted by timothy on from the make-them-bouncy-and-floaty dept.

LandGator writes "PC pundit Robert X Cringely had a life before writing 'Triumph of the Nerds' for PBS: He covered the atomics industry and reported on Three Mile Island. In this blog post, he analyzes the Fukushima reactor failures, and suggests the end result will be a rapid growth in small, sealed 'package' nuclear reactors such as the Toshiba 4S generator considered for Galena, Alaska. He thinks Japan may have little choice, and with rolling blackouts scheduled, he may be right."

2 of 430 comments (clear)

  1. NO.. just NO. STUPID IDEA. by Zurk · · Score: 5, Interesting

    the toshiba 4S is a sodium metal reactor. take that and shove it 30m underground to produce 10MW of power. awesome.
    until you factor in the earthquake and tsunami.
    water + sodium = BIG BOOM.
    and the fact that regulatory approvals take a shitload of time for EACH reactor.
    and you need 1200 of them to even come close to meeting demand.
    and 1200 x 100s of days of regulatory paperwork is much more than 2-4 conventional plants with 100s of days of paperwork each.
    not to mention environmental impact assessments at EACH SITE for EACH of those 1200 reactors.

    the toshiba design needs to use lead and be rebuilt. the legal process needs to change which will take longer than it takes to build conventional plants. in short... NO.

  2. Re:I'd be open to it, but good luck with everyone by anagama · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Wow, you have a direct feed from the Crack News Network or something?

    Puzzle me this, if only radioactive noble gasses were emitted, why did the Ronald Reagan have to move even though it is miles off shore? Why was there a spike of radioactivity in Tokyo, a couple hundred miles away -- are the winds really traveling 240km per couple minutes? What about the breach in in the containment of reactor two?

    More interestingly, what about the torus half full of water under the reactor -- will the building withstand a steam explosion when the core at some thousands of degrees hits that level, breaches the container, and releases the water? That's a big question that the US Atomic Energy Commission first asked in 1972. Cited from: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/world/asia/16contain.html

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