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NASA Successfully Tests New Nuclear Reactor For Future Space Travelers (npr.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy say they have successfully tested a new type of nuclear reactor that could one day provide juice to colonies on other worlds. The reactor can power several homes and appears able to operate in harsh environments. The new reactor uses more-conventional uranium fuel. Using a "core" about the size of a paper towel roll, the reactor can turn pistons that can run a generator. The generator can put out about 10 kilowatts of electrical power -- enough to run a few small homes. Scientists believe it could run continuously for a decade or so, making deep space travel a lot simpler. They also gave it a catchy acronym: KRUSTY, which stands for Kilopower Reactor Using Stirling TechnologY.
To see if it actually worked, scientists tested KRUSTY out in the Nevada desert on America's old nuclear test range. They put KRUSTY through its paces, culminating in a 28-hour test at full power. The team also simulated failures in KRUSTY's reactor components to show it wouldn't result in a meltdown on Mars. KRUSTY may find its way onto future space probes. Researchers say they might use an ensemble of four or five of the reactors to power colonies on the moon (which has 14-day nights, when the sun isn't available) or Mars.
To see if it actually worked, scientists tested KRUSTY out in the Nevada desert on America's old nuclear test range. They put KRUSTY through its paces, culminating in a 28-hour test at full power. The team also simulated failures in KRUSTY's reactor components to show it wouldn't result in a meltdown on Mars. KRUSTY may find its way onto future space probes. Researchers say they might use an ensemble of four or five of the reactors to power colonies on the moon (which has 14-day nights, when the sun isn't available) or Mars.
Can buy one for my house?
It's nicely at a power point where it could power a small apartment building and recharge all the electric vehicles fully overnight. If it were 30KW it could even power a highway capable SUV. While one might worry about crashes, remember these thermo-nuclear-electric power packs on sattelites are hardened to survive a rocket explosion and hard re-entry.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
This is impressive but with the NASA designed EmDrive this will not be needed in the future when we colonize other stars and planets.
I find it amusing they call nuclear "old-fashioned", when Fission was only discovered in 1938... granted photovoltaic may be newer, but we've known about solar and wind power (and combustion) in varying methods of harvest for millennia.
the real at&t mix
there's a difference between peak load and average load. your furnace does not run all the time. Not even most of the time. Moreover this thing is going to give off much more than 10KW of heat in addition to the electricity. So it is the furnace too. Examine your power bill. A typical 1 bedroom electric bill is $50/month in states with cheap electricity and taxes. that's less than 500KW/hours per month. not per day
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
It's so safe, even Homer could install it.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The idea of the neighborhood reactors. They were to be powered by uranium hydride and be the size of a garden shed. Did these ever come to fruition? https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/nov/09/miniature-nuclear-reactors-los-alamos
I don't know what kind of house they are powering, but without natural gas or propane for the water header and furnace, 10kw isn't going to cut it for one home much less multiple homes. I use a 14kw generator on my house. It's capable of running my well water pump, 2 ton A/C, and incidental loads. It cannot run the hot water heater, 4 ton A/C, Oven, dryer, etc.
I use about 75KWh a month in electricity, without even caring to switch lights off and having a PC, router on 24/7. Could easily go off the grid if I wanted.
The rest of the energy I use is from burning bits of timber and the odd 11kg drum of Butane (about 1 every month). I imagine this reactor would produce a good bit of waste heat that can be recovered in addition to the electricity
Use ganged tesla turbines. The problem with the tesla turbine is that it is only efficient in a very narrow speed/load range, but that's trivially solved by using multiples. Using multiples means backup/redundancy, and tesla turbines have only one moving part.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And you are perfectly normal.
Yeah. an easy typo to make. I don't think anyone who cares will not be able to figure out what was meant. Don't miss the point
We are nowhere near the point where we need to worry about powering a space colony, so why is NASA wasting money on this part ? Probably some senator getting a good deal.
That's Reserved for the Bay Area Rapid Transit.
I already have a space heater in my house.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I'll notify NASA immediately to stop work on this and switch to your design.
NASA monitors Slashdot at +5 to find the right way to do things. NASA's management figured out years ago that the science and engineering PhDs have nothing on a Slashdotter.
See, all those hours in the company's basement telling people, "Have you tried turning off and on again?" allows them to think big thought. And years of experience coding Javascript makes a Slashdotter an expert on space travel.
The only nuclear reactor endorsed by a clown.
Your house consumes more power, is less efficient, and has more creature comforts than the first homes on Mars will have.
You could get your house down to 10KW and with a battery for smoothing a 10KW generator would probably take care of your genset-only 14KW load.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I find it amazing that in this day and age we still have not figured out how to pull energy directly from the source. A nuclear reactor is just a fancy steam engine that uses hot rocks to generate steam. Surely there is a way to harness the radiation as an energy source that doesn't involve using the waste heat.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Hey, I could use something like that in my back yard for powering crypto mining rigs. :-P
a single electrical lamp is unaffordable luxury.
[citation needed]
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
True. Only Americans use more than 75KWh a month. In Europe for example they cook on rocket stoves regularly. I've been trying to convince Americans to do the same, but they never listen.
It would require a lot of battery storage to realistically power a home. If you wanted to run your A/C and dry some clothes while baking some food then you better have a system such as a Tesla home battery. If I could capture and store 10kW per hour, I could easily exist on 240 kWh per day. I could even charge electric cars at home. Certainly if I can afford my own nuclear reactor I could afford a 50kW stack of Li ion batteries!
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Very true. The first homes in Mars will likely have to use 40" televisions instead of the 65" ones that are more commonly found on Earth homes. 10KW should be plenty for a Mars home as long as you don't take too many hot water baths. Of course, you could use the radiation to warm the water.
Rural electrification is a big deal in places like India. There are a lot of villages in the north that just can't get grid electricity because of inaccessible terrain and inability to pay. Google scholar has a lot more...look for anything by Brian Min as a good starting point.
We are nowhere near the point where we need to worry about powering a space colony, so why is NASA wasting money on this part ?
Because if you don't have an adequate power system you NEVER will have a space colony. It's job number one. If you don't have adequate power system there is no mission. Literally every other part of the mission depends on it. Any form of transportation is fundamentally contingent upon having a reliable power supply with a power to weight (and volume) ratio adequate to the mission parameters. With a sufficiently small and powerful energy supply, nearly any mission is possible. Without it no mission is possible.
They should just purchase regional nuclear power plants and bury them to get power.
Sure, but it's hardly the most difficult or pressing issue.
Umm, yeah it pretty much is the biggest issue. Literally every mission depends on having an power supply with usable power, weight, and volume parameters. EVERY mission. Manned or unmanned - it doesn't matter. EVERY mission requires a power supply.
Developing a rocket and lander so we can put heavy objects safely on the surface of the Moon/Mars is a bigger challenge.
There is no point in launching stuff into space unless you can power the stuff once it is in space. They go hand in hand. There are missions that are literally impossible with the currently available power supplies. To do those missions you need a better power supply. Launching into orbit could be literally free and if you don't have a power supply adequate to the mission parameters there still will be no mission.
Also, without a rocket, a power supply is useless. A rocket without a power supply can be used for plenty of other missions.
Really? Name one mission that doesn't require a power supply. A mission needs a power supply to be a mission. It also needs a rocket to get to where the mission needs to go. It's not an either/or proposition. You need both.
shielded from the sun space is pretty darn cold
love is just extroverted narcissism
They wanna send these things into space? Screw that, we need those HERE on planet Earth. Mass produce those babies!
Clean energy for all, in a compact ruggized enclosure? I mean if someone takes it apart and dies from radiation, well that's on them.
You just need to be reasonably confident that you can make one in time for the actual launch. You don't need one sitting in the lab right now before you can start working on the other tasks.
Pray tell how you plan to be "reasonably confident" unless you are actually working on one? Research sometimes gets done sooner than you expect. Sometimes it takes longer. If you know you'll need a piece of technology you start working on it as early as your budget will allow to give the maximum amount of time to figure it out. If you are done early, great. Move on to other things. But procrastination is not your friend when every other part of the mission depends on it.
You've built your cities not for people, but for cars.
Actually nearly all US cities were built for horse carts. The freeways were a modern retrofit.
You do know what a Merkin is right?
No need to harden the reactor. Ship it without the U installed. The U can be in a separate hardened container and installed in the reactor at the destination if the transit is trouble free.
Notion here is nuclear reactor in a SUV. So the SUV is the destination. In so much as 'hardening' it takes a couple feet of lead to keep the gammas and ~4 MeV neutrons away - and that is the incident energy of the thing, no matter the size. I don't know about you, about a couple cubic feet of lead (not counting reactor) combined with 30Kw of motive power makes for a good day to walk (you might win that race, too).
Hmm, based on my electric bill, I use rather less than 240 KWh per day. Closer to 40 KWh per day right now.
Admittedly, we're not into AC (air-conditioner) time yet, and the use will jump to pretty close to 200/day when we're running the A/C 24/7. Which problem, a house on Mars won't have, I expect....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
> shielded from the sun space is pretty darn cold
empty space has no temperature.
By "hardening" I was referring to the U remaining contained after an explosion and/or crash (launch failure, etc). Basically that keeping a specialized U container from leaking seemed a simpler problem than keeping a fueled reactor from leaking.
Will they call it KRUSTY the clown?
shielded from the sun space is pretty darn cold
No, it isn't. When you're in that vacuum, where are you going to dump your heat? How efficiently can you radiate it into the void? (Hint: not very.)
It's very close to a cunt.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This thing is categorically NOT designed for colonies, though they could be shoehorned into doing the job early on in the absence of anything better. They just don't deliver enough power - their own example has four of the scaled-up 10kW models combined to deliver enough power for a single initial outpost - 40kW will keep a small research outpost alive, but provides very little excess energy to fuel ecosystem and industry growth, both of which would be critical for a colony.
These are designed primarily for research missions, especially robotic deep-space missions to Jupiter and beyond, where solar ceases to be particularly useful. Currently we mostly use RTGs to power for such missions, but those deliver very little power (typically hundreds of watts at the most), which severely limits the possible mission scope.
And as far as colonies and outposts are concerned - with a little luck the BFR will enable high payload round trips to the moon within the next decade, possibly well before then. At that point both research outposts and aggressive robotic exploration become far more relevant, and it'd be nice to have a thoroughly tested power system ready long before then so that early missions can focus on how to maximize it's utility, rather than trying to develop that as well.
Between the SpaceX BFR, Bigelow inflatable habitats, and now Kilopower reactors, we have a good chance of having all the necessary components for a lunar outpost ready to deploy within a mere handful of years - that's something that couldn't be realistically considered even 5 or ten years ago. That moves the conversation from "Can we do this?" to "What should the mission profile be?" That's huge progress, and if we start seriously planning now, we just might have a solid mission plan ready by the time it becomes possible.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I'm not sure, but I'm guessing that NASA might send some shit to Mars that's a little more efficient than what you bought at Home Depot.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
What, you mean that the Minutemen weren't driving their Range Rovers up to the battle at Yorktown in order to seal the deal against King George?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
No salts - from what I can find on wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilopower ), since NASA's site is sadly bereft of detail:
Nuclear reaction control is provided by a single rod of boron carbide which is a neutron moderator that is initially fully inserted, so that pre-launch radiation is negligible. Once the moderator is extracted the nuclear chain reaction will start but can not be stopped completely, although the depth of insertion provides a mechanism to adjust the heat output from the reactor core to the load demand.
Passive heat pipes filled with liquid sodium then transfer the reactor core heat to one or more Stirling engines, which converts heat into rotary motion that drives a conventional electric generator. The melting point of sodium is 98 C (208 F) which means that liquid sodium can flow freely at high temperatures between about 400 and 700 C (750 and 1,300 F) while nuclear fission cores typically work at about 600 C (1,100 F).
I'm not terribly surprised, really. Molten salt reactors typically rely on gravity to power the fuel convection, as well as the "safe" meltdown behavior. Since these are designed primarily for microgravity conditions in deep space, existing molten-salt reactor designs would be useless. Even on the moon or Mars you'd need a reactor designed for 17% or 38% gravity, respectively.
The meltdown protection is likewise not terribly relevant - if your probe's reactor fails, it's dead, regardless of how "safe" the failure was. On the Moon or Mars you have some long-term environmental contamination concern - but the local environment would kill you just as quickly without radioactive contamination, and there are minimal (known) geological or ecological processes to cause the contamination to spread (rather than just melt it's way down into a nicely contained borehole) so it's not that urgent of a problem. Plus the amount of fuel in these is miniscule compared to the 100 tonnes of enriched uranium in a typical MW-scale reactor on Earth.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I would imagine that on Mars you would need heat. And as it turns out, this thing generates one hell of a lot of heat in order to turn the attached Stirling engine. That heat still has to go somewhere - may as well use it for environmental conditioning before it goes into the thin Martian atmosphere and not bother using the electricity generated for that.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
It should be noted that a block of U235 represents a tremendously reduced radiation risk than an RTG (which inherently has crazy "hot" isotopes on launch, because that is how it works).
Once the reactor has been running for a while, you will get crazy "hot" isotopes, but the theory is not to run the reactor until the probe is far enough away from earth.
On the other hand, should the U235 survive a launch failure but end up in the wrong hands, say someone working on a weapon...well that is another issue.
What, you mean that the Minutemen weren't driving their Range Rovers up to the battle at Yorktown in order to seal the deal against King George?
Of course not. Range Rovers are built by British Leyland. Not only are they British, but back then they used electrical components made by Lucas, so it's unlikely that more than a few would have survived the drive to the battlefield, must less the rigors of combat driving.
The vehicle of choice for the American troops was naturally the French provided Citroen DS, whose hydropneumatic self-leveling suspension made the attacking troops an impossible target to hit as they bobbed and weaved on their way to redoubts 9 and 10.
An RTG uses Pu-238 which is an ideal fit because of its half-life (long enough to provide power for decades, short enough to provide usable amounts of power), and because it emits pretty much alpha radiation only, which is really easy to shield. It also needs no liquid cooling, making it fairly easy to stick the Pu in a launch-failure-survivable container.
Your 14kw generator, if running 24/7, would produce over 10 megawatt hours of energy every 30 days. On average, most people in the USA, the highest consumers of electricity in the world, don't even use a tenth of that, and I'd honestly be surprised if your actual monthly energy usage was even 20% of that capacity.
Coupled with a good sized battery for storage for the occasions when usage is actually higher than whatever the generator can instantaneously produce, 10kw would be more than enough for anybody, for purely residential and non-industrial usage.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
RTFA, It says the CORE is the size of a paper towel.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
In deep space, how do they dissipate the heat generated by the reactor?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
One of the main driver for Kilopower development is the lack of available Pu-238 and low capacity for its future production. This is seriously affecting missions to Jupiter and beyond.
Kilopower requires only enriched uranium (of which the US has plenty) and can actually deliver more power than feasible RTGs. It's also inherently launch safe, until the reactor is turned on, it's basically a lump of naturally occurring metal.