200 KW mini-reactor

On Dec 26, 11:24 pm, Alfred Montestruc wrote:
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...tepaper%20Rev0...

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.

Sounds perfectly doable and relatively failsafe as of at least a
decade ago.

- Brad Guth