
Dept. of Energy signs agreements to develop small nuclear generators - 3lit3H4ck3r
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/03/dept-of-energy-signs-agreements-to-develop-small-nuclear-generators.ars?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+arstechnica%2Findex+%28Ars+Technica+-+Featured+Content%29
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pjscott
Excellent news, if it pans out. Here are the reactors they're working on:

Hyperion: A 25 Megawatt-electric (MWe) lead-bismuth-cooled fast reactor.
Operates at a high temperature, which makes it potentially useful as a source
of industrial process heat, e.g. the Haber-Bosch process for synthesizing
ammonia. Has a nice negative temperature coefficient of reactivity: if it gets
too hot, the reaction slows down.

Westinghouse SMR: Essentially a much-scaled-down version of Westinghouse's
AP1000. Pretty conventional. At 200 MWe, it's the largest of the three.

NuScale: Another conservative pressurized light water reactor. Uses shortened
versions of standard fuel rods, so the fuel supply chain should be pretty
simple. Smaller than the Westinghouse SMR, at 45 MWe.

All three are small enough that they can be manufactured at factories and
shipped out by boat, rail, or a particularly big truck. Their pressure vessels
are light enough that they don't need to wait in line for heavy forgings from
the handful of companies capable of making pressure vessels for the gigawatt
behemoths. I hope that the NRC doesn't kill them.

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Corrado
I was really hoping to see a thorium[1] reactor in this list. Apparently,
several government labs are working on a small, portable thorium reactor that
would be great for this type of thing. The SSTAR[2] (small, sealed,
transportable, autonomous reactor) system will produce 10 to 100 megawatts
electric and can be safely transported on ship or by a heavy-haul transport
truck. Perfect!

1:<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium>

2:[http://www.thorium.tv/en/thorium_reactor/thorium_reactor_1.p...](http://www.thorium.tv/en/thorium_reactor/thorium_reactor_1.php)

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ksec
I read a paper about it recently, and it states while everything is good, it
will still takes years of research and development, trial and testing before
it moves into deployment stage.

So unless someone with many BILLIONS decide to tackle the problem, the time it
takes Thorium to get traction making it not really an alternative ATM.

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DennisP
About a year ago China committed a billion dollars to developing liquid
thorium reactors. Australia and Czechoslovakia have a partnership with about
$300 million committed so far.

Sorenson and others have estimated that a billion or two is about what we'd
need, and about ten years with a strong effort.

There are a lot of variants, some more difficult than others. Instead of going
for the LFTR right off, we could start with the DMSR. It's a non-breeding
molten salt reactor using uranium, but about five times more efficiently than
LWRs, excellent proliferation resistance, and all the safety advantages of
LFTR.

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tdicola
It wouldn't surprise me to see these or similar small nuclear generators
powering datacenters in the near future. I've always thought turning old
nuclear submarines into small datacenters would be an interesting way to
recycle them.

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_delirium
Afaik, U.S. nuclear submarines in particular are designed to run on very
highly enriched Uranium (>90% U-235), which makes them both security-sensitive
and expensive to fuel.

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Roboprog
I hope we do it, AND, I hope we closely regulate them. Nuclear power is dirty.
So is coal, oil, clear-cutting forests, and turning corn into fuel.

Not a big fan of the collapse thing, so little nuke plants seem to be the
lesser evil.

Whatever happened to the talk about "pebble beds" -- little fuel pellets in
ceramic marbles that can't pack close enough to go critical?

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pjscott
> Nuclear power is dirty. So is coal, oil, clear-cutting forests, and turning
> corn into fuel.

They are not the same amount of dirty, not by a long shot. The regulatory
burden on nuclear power is psychotically out of proportion to its actual
safety risk and environmental impact, and gives an unfair advantage to energy
sources like coal and methane which are much dirtier and more dangerous.
Beyond a certain point, safety regulations on nuclear power make us less safe.
We're well past that point.

(Regarding pebble beds: China has an experimental pebble bed plant under
construction. Each module consists of two 105 MWe reactors sharing the same
turbomachinery for generating electricity. It looks like the plan is to get
the manufacturing infrastructure working, get some operational experience
actually running the things, and then start building more and possibly
exporting them commercially to other countries.)

