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| Science & Technology | ||
| Coming soon: local nuclear power | ||
| 2007-11-26 | ||
Encase it in concrete, truck it to a site, bury it underground, hook it up to a steam turbine and, voila, one would generate enough electricity to power a 25,000-home community for at least five years. The company Hyperion Power Generation was formed last month to develop the nuclear fission reactor at Los Alamos National Laboratory and take it into the private sector. If all goes according to plan, Hyperion could have a factory in New Mexico by late 2012, and begin producing 4,000 of these reactors. Though it would produce 27 megawatts worth of thermal energy, Hyperion doesn’t like to think of its product as a “reactor.” It’s self-contained, involves no moving parts and, therefore, doesn’t require a human operator. “In fact, we prefer to call it a ‘drive’ or a ‘battery’ or a ‘module’ in that it’s so safe,” Hyperion spokeswoman Deborah Blackwell says. “Like you don’t open a double-A battery, you just plug [the reactor] in and it does its chemical thing inside of it. You don’t ever open it or mess with it.” LANL scientist Otis Peterson filed the patent for the nuclear fission reactor in 2003. In theory, the reactor uses uranium crystals and hydrogen isotopes to create an internal, self-regulating balance. Because it’s so new, anti-nuclear power activists aren’t quite sure what to make of it yet. But ‘skeptical’ is perhaps too gentle a word for their initial reactions to Hyperion’s claims of a “clean” energy source. “This whole idea is loony and not worthy of too much attention,” Los Alamos Study Group Executive Director Greg Mello says. “Of course, factoring in enough cronyism, corruption and official ignorance and boosterism, it’s possible the principals could make some money during the initial stages, before the crows come home to roost.”
Blackwell is a director of Purple Mountain Ventures, a self-described “adventure capital” firm specializing in commercial development of LANL technology. Purple Mountain also is the financial backer behind The Company for Information Visualization and Analysis (CIVA), a local company developing LANL pandemic modeling software. Hyperion’s reactor, though, has the potential to solve the energy crisis, according to Blackwell. “The lab is doing a lot of work on oil shales and oil sands, but there’s no way to get power to those facilities,” Blackwell says. “So, this nuclear battery would be brought in and that would provide the power to run a small city of industrial use.” Blackwell also envisions that the battery could be used at military bases, as well as in the developing world, where poverty is a product of a lack of electricity and clean drinking water. This week, Hyperion meets with its first potential clients, but Blackwell hopes to approach the United Nations and international humanitarian groups. So far, though, anti-nuclear advocates don’t buy the claims advertised on Hyperion’s Web site (www.hyperionpowergeneration.com). “The nuclear industry has never given the complete picture.” Nuclear Watch New Mexico Executive Director Jay Coghlan says. “Taxpayer subsidies and the environmental and financial costs of mining and enriching uranium and waste disposal are never completely factored in.” | ||
| Posted by:lotp |
| #9 Just think a Nuke powered Abrams that if you blew it up in your town... you would pollute your own country.... Shoot me and the land gets it! |
| Posted by: 3dc 2007-11-26 17:49 |
| #8 they turn it on and off? ... You'd need a guaranteed source of water. Sounds like hydrogen gas is the coolant as well as the neutron moderator. No H2, no fission (or a whole lot less). The small size implies the use of highly enriched uranium. That seems like a no-no except in highly controlled military vessels. I would think it not a good idea even on military bases, lest it get overrun and the reactor carted off and the HEU extracted. |
| Posted by: ed 2007-11-26 16:24 |
| #7 This sounds like a similar idea to a pebble bed reactor. That is, the radioactive material is spaced so that it produces a given amount of heat over a given time. Even if the water runs out and it gets hot, it *cannot* get hotter than well below the temperature to either damage its container or any internal parts like pipes. Other than that, you need some mechanism to safely start water flowing through such a hot reactor without causing a steam explosion. You want it to generate steam, not explosive steam, which can be destructive. This is not particularly difficult, and has to be part of any steam turbine system. The water system of the turbine is in no danger of getting contaminated, as it is physically separate from the radioactive material. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-11-26 15:01 |
| #6 If it has no knobs, then how do they turn it on and off? You can't just have this thing sitting there producing 25MW of heat at all times without consequences! You'd need a guaranteed source of water. Which makes me wonder how you ship it and decommission it? I'm sure in the developing world there would be all kinds of problems with this if this is truly the case. They must have something in mind to take care of this. |
| Posted by: gorb 2007-11-26 14:45 |
| #5 You can gauge how good it is by the enviro response. The more likely it is to work, the harder they'll try to kill it. The point being that the enviro lobby doesn't want "clean" energy, it wants "no" energy. No cars, no toilet paper, no air conditioning, no air travel. Nada. Except for their own use of course. |
| Posted by: Iblis 2007-11-26 12:22 |
| #4 the enviros might be wondering about the reprocessing that would be needed after the working period was over personnally I wish we did have more reprocessing capacity in the US - it could substantially reduce the volume of high level waste |
| Posted by: mhw 2007-11-26 11:50 |
| #3 Thanks for the optimism lotp. I've been a strong proponent of the 'blue glow' for years (well, since college anyway). We can only hope that the cachet of being from Los Alamos and PMV would give this micro-reactor the strong defense/offense against the 'screamers' who would rather live in the dark. |
| Posted by: Mullah Richard 2007-11-26 11:26 |
| #2 I know there have been a variety of approaches proposed for small nuclear power plants, Richard. Sorry to hear your hypothetical design got spiked in the 70s. This is being spun out of LANL, tho, as an implemented system under an approved program for commercialization of proven prototypes. It's quite likely the patent will be awarded and if so, I would not be surprised to see these being used in some military and similar applications before being taken to the commercial market. BTW, the leaders at Purple Mountain have a pretty good track record. And their investors include some heavy money from the west coast. But we'll see .... |
| Posted by: lotp 2007-11-26 10:58 |
| #1 it's possible these idiots might kill a valuable technology Sorry, lotp. They've been killing this technology for years. Similar nuclear 'micro' technology isn't new, we were doing the 'hypothetical implementation layout' for one of my engineering classes in the mid-70s using (at that time) existing technology (which would have allowed a similar size & output powerplant package). We did a combined paper, published it, and were promptly savaged by local and national media/eco/peacenik/loon groups. We were surprised by the rapidity of the response, but one of the professors figured that some environmentalist from the ag-engineering department (unfortunately same building) blew the whistle. As you can guess, the project never received any further funding. |
| Posted by: Mullah Richard 2007-11-26 09:46 |