A personal nuclear reactor? Not so fast!
I enjoy reading the personal blogs of Scott Adams (the creator of Dilbert) and John Dvorak (PC Magazine columnist and host of Cranky Geeks), but I don't expect to learn anything there. The entertainment is value enough.
Today, however, I was surprised to see these two gentlemen linking to the same story on Next Energy News covering Toshiba's announcement of a "200 kilowatt" nuclear reactor only "20 feet by 6 feet" in size. Such a reactor could be installed in a garage-sized building and shared among the houses on just one residential block, the apartments in one large building, or a single good-size corporation headquarters. With maintenance-free operation and the price of the generated energy estimated at 5 cents per kilowatt-hour, this announcement appeared to undermine the usual arguments against nuclear power.
Run through the basic numbers, as one commenter on Dvorak's blog did, and you come out with annual operating costs around $87,500 and a total cost over 40 years of about $3.5 million. Heck, never mind powering the neighborhood; I know a lot of people in Silicon Valley who'd build one into their houses.
Alas, the rest of the important numbers--the ones not covered by Next Energy News--don't work out so well for the Valley's wealthy. According to some information I found on the Encyclopedia of Earth, the reactor in question is called the Rapid-L, and the 200-kilowatt electrical output is just a small part of the reactor's thermal power production of 5 megawatts.
So even if your McMansion is filled with enough electronic gizmos to use up that 200-kilowatt power rating, there's no way it can dissipate 5 megawatts of thermal power. That's enough to heat over 200 homes during a 27° F (-3° C) cold snap. You'll just have to share.
But if you're one of the Silicon Valley multimillionaires who built mansions in Idaho because you love fly-fishing, you may be in luck; just divert part of your trout stream to provide cooling water for the reactor. You'll never need to turn off that big plasma TV again, and even the fish will be happier in the warmer water.
Peter N. Glaskowsky is a computer architect in Silicon Valley and a technology analyst for the Envisioneering Group. He has designed chip- and board-level products in the defense and computer industries, managed design teams, and served as editor in chief of the industry newsletter "Microprocessor Report." He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. 
You think big brother is going to let it be legal? Look at what they are doing to Iran.
. png
Read more here regarding cold fusion and the miraculous metal palladium:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/55173-palladium-an-investable-metal-that-defies-physics
My company has been working hard for about 15 years to develop a pebble bed reactor that can be economically built in sizes ranging from 1 MW to 100 MW using proven turbine and compressor technology along with high temperature gas cooled reactors.
You can find out more with a Google search of "Adams Engines" or "backyard nukes". We have a blog at Atomic Insights and a podcast called The Atomic Show.
Fission works - fusion is still just a pipedream unless you want explosive power or if you want to locate your power plant about 93 million miles away.
Rod Adams
Adams Atomic Engines, Inc.
The nuclear professionals can't supply safe power, how do they expect others to? If you think nuclear power is safe, might I suggest you go camping near nuclear reservations in places like Colorado and Washington State?
Nuclear power has saved hundreds of thousands of lives, perhaps millions, that would otherwise have been lost to diseases caused by fossil-fuel power generation.
Genetically-modified food has made food production practical in places where it previously wasn't, and increased crop yields everywhere else, thus saving a comparable number of lives that would otherwise have been lost to starvation.
You're free to sit in your comfy centrally-heated home munching Doritos from the local Safeway and complain bitterly about things you don't understand, but don't expect to get away with it here.
. png
Why do you fear atomic energy?
I have spent many months sealed up inside a submarine less than 200 feet from a nuclear reactor. It was a good neighbor and a reliable power source.
I have had several pleasant hikes in the state park just north of the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Station. I would have no problem camping or living near a nuclear plant, especially one that is small, compact and designed to be an inconspicuous neighbor.
Though the pressurized water technology that has been in commercial use for more than 50 years is plenty safe, technology never stands still.
Dedicated scientists and engineers have been working on improvements made that make it possible to build moderately sized reactors that cannot melt. The technology that I like was conceived by Farrington Daniels in the US in the mid 1950s, developed and refined at Julich in Germany and is now being operated in China at Tsinghua University. You can find a video on Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Catalyst program web site of an operational test of the passive safety capability of the system. http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1854362.htm
During the video, the operators turn off all of the cooling and watch the plant shut itself down and never get hot enough to melt. It is pretty boring stuff, but that is the way I like my power plants.
Here is a link to a presentation by Dr. Andy Kadak of MIT that gives an overview of the high temperature gas reactor technology that makes this kind of system possible.
http://web.mit.edu/pebble-bed/Presentation/GasReactor.pdf
When it comes to energy systems, I certainly prefer those that use compact, heavy metal fuel whose waste products can be completely contained to fossil fuels where the waste product volume is so massive that it has to be freely released to the environment.
Fission is superior to combustion, but the people that make money selling combustion fuels do not want the rest of the world to figure that out.
The actual generation of power may be safe(although it is not always), but the waste that it leaves makes it completely unacceptable.
Can not melt? If you think anything is 100% safe you are beyond naive.
Too many broken down cars on the road..people can't keep their cars running, let a lone run a safe nuclear reactor in their back yard.
ANyways, Terrorist or would be terrorist would surely buy this crap up to use.
They are cheaper, faster to build and safer (by desgn, they can never go into a melt-down.
Ahahahaha.
You're one of those people that eats up whatever bullshiat they're spoonfed, I can see.
Nuclear power has been safe for over 30 years. Hell, Chernobyl only happened because Russia built a very poor reactor and used horrible materials. Even at that time, other nuclear initiatives were very safe.
Three Mile Island is proof that there's very little risk with a nuclear plant.
Your suggestion is right on target. It really depends on the temperature at which the waste heat is produced.
When the exhaust temperature of a cycle is high enough, the energy in the exhaust can be used in a second electricity producing heat cycle. It is quite common for Brayton Cycle combustion turbines to be paired with steam turbines in what is often called Gas Turbine Combined Cycle plants. The exhaust temperature of gas turbines is high enough to produce good quality steam for a Rankine cycle steam turbine.
The same concept can be used in a nuclear fission heated Brayton Cycle. At Adams Atomic Engines, we consider combined cycle plants to be a refinement that we will investigate after we have successfully built and operated simple cycle machines. We like the idea of taking one step at a time and ensuring that we fully understand all of the implications of additional complexity.
In addition to combined cycle plants where the steam created from exhaust heat is used in electricity generation, there are also systems called "cogeneration" where lower temperature "waste" heat can be the input for processes like water distillation, materials processing, and space heat.
Based on what I know about the RAPID-L system designed in Japan and described in the original blog post, it might be best to use the waste heat for cogeneration rather than in a combined cycle - the temperature is pretty low compared to what you need for useful steam pressures.
Rod Adams
Adams Atomic Engines, Inc.
Adams Atomic Engines, Inc.
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- by pinokkkio January 17, 2008 2:26 PM PST
- Free prescription
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