200 KW mini-reactor

On Dec 20, 10:43*pm, (Rand Simberg)
wrote:
On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 15:30:43 -0600, in a place far, far away, Pat
Flannery made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

The future is officially here!
The robot is vacuuming the floor, the flat screen TV is on the
wall...but something is missing...The Nuclear Reactor In The Basement of
course!:
http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/...shiba-micro-nu...
This could have major ramifications for space exploration and bases on
other planets.
Is this now small enough to drive a large vehicle?

Size isn't the only issue. *How do you do electrical conversion in a
reliable way, and how do you keep it cool?

Themocouples although horribly inefficient . . . are reliable. As for
cooling, run the other way when someone suggests sodium. A great
coolant . . . until you need to do maintenance.

best

John

John wrote:

On Dec 20, 10:43*pm, (Rand Simberg)
wrote:

Size isn't the only issue. *How do you do electrical conversion in a
reliable way, and how do you keep it cool?

Themocouples although horribly inefficient . . . are reliable. As for
cooling, run the other way when someone suggests sodium. A great
coolant . . . until you need to do maintenance.

He didn't ask what was used as a coolant - he asked how it was cooled.
The two questions, while superficially similar, are very different
things. For example - a typical IC automobile engine uses water as a
coolant, but it is cooled by the radiator.

Stuffed tigers on the other hand are cooled by sombreros.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

Derek Lyons wrote:

He didn't ask what was used as a coolant - he asked how it was cooled.
The two questions, while superficially similar, are very different
things. For example - a typical IC automobile engine uses water as a
coolant, but it is cooled by the radiator.

Stuffed tigers on the other hand are cooled by sombreros.


"He who would siesta with El Diablo should wear a wide sombrero." - Fr.
Rev. Dr. Ernesto Cojones, Justice League Of Mexico.
Meanwhile, back at the tritium...tritium gas glows bright green, like
radioactive stuff is supposed to:
http://www.answers.com/topic/radioluminescence
I'll bet they told you back in your boomer days: "If you ever see some
weird **** that glows bright green come floating out of the inside of
that missile's launch tube, you get the hell out of there ASAP, you
non-qual puke!"

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:

Meanwhile, back at the tritium...tritium gas glows bright green, like
radioactive stuff is supposed to:
http://www.answers.com/topic/radioluminescence

Those vials have an inner coating of green-glowing phosphor, which is
energized by the beta-emitting tritium. The beta particles themselves
don't produce the glow -- they don't even make it through the glass.

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...
Meanwhile, back at the tritium...tritium gas glows bright green, like
radioactive stuff is supposed to

I had a tritium watch in my high school days.

My brother discovered- after he had already stripped and cleaned it- that
the sight in his M-16 had tritium, and it was therefore a court-martial
offense for him to handle radioactive material. The fact that the weapon,
when assembled, still had radioactive material was ignored. Fortunately, his
drill sergeant simply made him do several hundred pushups instead of
arranging for a court martial.

John wrote:
Size isn't the only issue. How do you do electrical conversion in a
reliable way, and how do you keep it cool?


Themocouples although horribly inefficient . . . are reliable. As for
cooling, run the other way when someone suggests sodium. A great
coolant . . . until you need to do maintenance.


The whole thing is supposed to be a sealed capsule unit one hundred feet
underground that basically just emits heat - the lithium or sodium has a
high enough boiling point that the primary loop isn't pressurized like
the superheated water primary loop in a submarine reactor.
From what I can make of it, the water flows down to the reactor, is
heated via the lithium or sodium primary inside the reactor, and comes
back up to the surface as high pressure steam which goes into the
turbine that generates the electricity.
I assume the water is then condensed in some sort of a closed loop
process and goes back down to the capsule again.
I can tell you one thing...after forty years, you aren't going to want
to get anywhere near what's inside that reactor capsule. That's going to
be the biggest collection of odd isotopes you ever laid eyes on.
I assume the whole buried capsule is going to have a lot of shielding
around it; probably a couple of feet of radiation absorbing plastic.
What I'm trying to figure out is how it self-controls the reaction to
prevent overheating if the water flow stops.
Is it designed so that the lithium or sodium works as a fast neutron
moderator, and if it boils, it goes somewhere else till the reaction
slows down?
I've read of a reactor design where the reaction stops if the water
boils away, but the mention of baffle plates makes it sound like things
are going to be moving around inside the capsule, and I don't see how
you make those reliable without maintenance for 40 years.

Pat

My first impression of this nuclear reactor is that it is very small. It
could power a high school but probably not a large hospital.

At five cents per kilowatt and 200 kilowatts output, it is generating $10
dollars in energy per hour, $86,660 per year, or $3.5 million over 40 years.

An interesting application would be for a developer to put up 60 homes with
LED lighting, insulation, etc. Each would get 3.3 kW of continuous power at
a cost of $118.80 per month.

If one considers the total initial cost, interest, and "decommisioning" at
$10 million, the it might contrast with mains power at a forty year average
of fifty cents per kWh totaling $35 million, for a net savings of $25
million.


--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

Revision wrote:

An interesting application would be for a developer to put up 60 homes
with LED lighting, insulation, etc. Each would get 3.3 kW of
continuous power at a cost of $118.80 per month.

For comparison, I used 278 kW hours last month in my apartment for a
total charge of $24.14, although heating and water heating are included
in the rent.
Electrical usage tops out at around $ 70.00 per month in summer due to
air conditioning costs.
If I really cut corners (stopped running the ceiling fan in the bathroom
24/7 for air circulation and getting the cigarette smoke out as well as
covering up the sounds of the apartment building while sleeping, stopped
working on the computer while listening to the TV, opened the window
curtains during daylight so my neighbors could see that I spend around
97.5% of my time in the apartment either stark naked or wearing only my
briefs, and replacing all the incandescent lighting systems with
fluorescents, as well as opening up the windows on summer nights - then
shutting things up as tight as a drum in early morning before the
temperature starts to rise) I could easily cut that down to around
$15.00 in winter, and around $30.00 in summer.
This year I topped out at a total electrical usage of around 780 kW in
August.

Pat

"Revision" wrote:

My first impression of this nuclear reactor is that it is very small. It
could power a high school but probably not a large hospital.

At five cents per kilowatt and 200 kilowatts output, it is generating $10
dollars in energy per hour, $86,660 per year, or $3.5 million over 40 years.

An interesting application would be for a developer to put up 60 homes with
LED lighting, insulation, etc. Each would get 3.3 kW of continuous power at
a cost of $118.80 per month.

Your costs are too low... You need to figure in the interest on the
loan to buy the thing, the costs of the land (more than you might
think when you include the cooling systems) to install it on, and
costs of maintenance.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

On Dec 20, 9:43 pm, (Rand Simberg)
wrote:
On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 15:30:43 -0600, in a place far, far away, Pat
Flannery made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

The future is officially here!
The robot is vacuuming the floor, the flat screen TV is on the
wall...but something is missing...The Nuclear Reactor In The Basement of
course!:
http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/...shiba-micro-nu...
This could have major ramifications for space exploration and bases on
other planets.
Is this now small enough to drive a large vehicle?

Size isn't the only issue. How do you do electrical conversion in a
reliable way, and how do you keep it cool?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galena_Nuclear_Power_Plant

technical data in NRC proposal

http://www.roe.com/pdfs/technical/Ga...er%20Rev02.pdf

It is a straight up steam turbine set up being run by a heat from a
low pressure sodium coolant loop in the reactor. The reactor is a
very simple modular design with one (1) control rod, passive safety
feature (to shut it down as required and not needing power to work)
and is supposed to have a life of 30 years and the whole reactor core
is to be removed and disposed of at the end of it's useful life and
possibly replaced with another reactor core module.

All radioactive materials to stay in the reactor module through the
life of the reactor and removed for final disposal at the end of life.

What it says in the advert anyway.