same way you operate a furnace. You set the dial to the desired output and it just works. if it doesn't work, you call the repair guy. easy enough.
- Aug 30, 2004
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This is a good idea and it would be a huge boost to our economy and provide many jobs, on the new Nuclear Reactor assembly line. There would be jobs in installation ,sales, everybody would want one. And i don't think they would be that expensive. There are a lot of buildings in this country that don't have nuclear power in them so the market is Huge. There may be some technical hurdles to overcome and some security issues but nothing that can't be handled. Hell aircraft carriers have been using reactors for years. I mean if nothing else the Sears Tower and any large building is as big as a carrier could have one. Come on now enough with the pessimism.
Mo0o
Lifer
- Jul 31, 2001
- 24,227
- 3
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Seems like your idea is already in the works: http://www.nextenergynews.com/...ro-nuclear-12.17b.html although no word on how much reactor costs.
- Aug 30, 2004
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There you go. And i have had this in my head for years. Why should this country be lagging in this area. Stupid. They have a small experimental reactor in some small community in Alaska i read about. But it runs the whole community small though it is. We should be leading in this effort.
I don't think you realize how much power large ships use. A Nimitz-class carrier outputs about 200MW. The entire city of New York uses ~5GW. And they have about a bajillion skyscrapers.
And, again, there is NOT enough fissile material on the planet to support large-scale deployment of nuclear energy without breeder reactors!
As someone who recently got a job designing electrical systems for a nuclear reactor, and also having both parents with degrees in nuclear engineering I can pretty well say that this would be one of the most retarded ideas ever though up by man. I mean maybe my sarcasm meter is broken, but it actually sounds like you are serious and this idea is dumb on many many levels. First off the RTGs spoken of are not nuclear reactors, they just use decay heat, the isotopes for these RTGs are created in a nuclear reactor, so its not like you are going "off the gird" here, you would need to build MORE large nuclear reactors in order to create this fuel. Also RTGs are exceedingly inefficient and do not even use the tiniest fraction of energy potential in that plutonium. Also, besides all that there is the simple fact that giving everyone a bunch of plutonium is completely retarded. Its is very radioactive, very chemically poisonous etc...
As for this whole story:
I'm not really sure where this whole idea came up, it's probably from the whole peak oil folks, but it really does not apply to uranium at this time, there is currently a shortage of MINING capacity, not a shortage of uranium in the ground. While using only the U-235 is obviously terrible inefficient there are still hundreds of years worth of uranium in the ground even with a huge increase in consumption. And FWIW this is not even my opinion I am voicing here, it is my dads who BTW has a masters in nuclear engineering, and 32 years of experience in the nuclear fuel business. The good majority of his job is working with nuclear fuel companies to get contracts for nuclear fuel to be used in reactors, and the number of people selling uranium these days is going way up with all the new exploration going on based on the currently high uranium price. The current shortage is not the beginning of "peak uranium", it is simply due to the fact that uranium mining was depressed for many years when the government was releasing uranium from its own stockpiles and now that this practice has slowed there is a shortage of mining capacity until new mines open.
As for this whole story:
I'm not really sure where this whole idea came up, it's probably from the whole peak oil folks, but it really does not apply to uranium at this time, there is currently a shortage of MINING capacity, not a shortage of uranium in the ground. While using only the U-235 is obviously terrible inefficient there are still hundreds of years worth of uranium in the ground even with a huge increase in consumption. And FWIW this is not even my opinion I am voicing here, it is my dads who BTW has a masters in nuclear engineering, and 32 years of experience in the nuclear fuel business. The good majority of his job is working with nuclear fuel companies to get contracts for nuclear fuel to be used in reactors, and the number of people selling uranium these days is going way up with all the new exploration going on based on the currently high uranium price. The current shortage is not the beginning of "peak uranium", it is simply due to the fact that uranium mining was depressed for many years when the government was releasing uranium from its own stockpiles and now that this practice has slowed there is a shortage of mining capacity until new mines open.
Jeff7
Lifer
- Jan 4, 2001
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With today's fusion reactors, if there's a reactor core breach, the temperature will immediately drop as the plasma expands, and thus the reaction will stop. But you'll still get a nice blast of plasma at several tens of millions of degrees C.
If you're talking about RTGs, 1) they're inefficient, 2) They use plutonium.
The plutonium is very toxic, and second, there wouldn't be enough plutonium production in the world to light one T 1 3/4 LED for each person on Earth, using RTGs. A fair amount of production goes to NASA. Their probes need several kilograms to power their RTGs. New Horizons faced a shortage of plutonium, and it only needed about 11kg of it.
I miss the Prometheus Project.
They wanted to put uranium reactors - genuine fission reactors - on spaceships. Instead of laboring with a few hundred watts of power (Cassini has 3 RTGs, but has only about 850 watts available), probes would have many kilowatts available to them, and the reaction rate could be adjusted. With RTGs, plutonium decay produces the heat, and once the plutonium is brought into existence, it starts to decay. There's no on/off switch. A fission-powered probe could also be equipped with a nice ion engine, to work up some damn good speeds without using loads of conventional propellants. My mission of choice - one to Europa, a probe equipped with powerful scanners to look beneath the icy crust, for signs of the theorized ocean.Alternate energy solutions: Nanosolar has finally started producing panels for around $1/watt. And, Rubycon recently posted an article about a new battery technology, which, if I remember right, uses silicon nanofibers and lithium, to provide a capacity about 10x that of standard Li-ion cells in use today. Li-ion already blows away the competition in terms of energy density per unit mass. If they can make this new material cheaply, (and if I keep dreaming) like even competitive with regular Li-ion or NiMH, plenty of things would become possible. Electric cars would finally have the long ranges people keep claiming to need. Storage cells at home, which could be powered by Nanosolar's panels, could store enough power to really run a home. And, as a side bonus, batteries could occupy a much smaller volume in electronic devices, or else provide much longer life. Imagine running your laptop for 20hrs without a charge.
Jeff7
Lifer
- Jan 4, 2001
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Google leads, ye shalst follow.(Link in
)Long story short - they create new fissile material from other stuff, such as partially consumed uranium. They can be used to "breed" plutonium from other sources.
Or, "Aw come on, what's the worst that could happen?"
It's much more efficient to have nuclear power plants that generate power and distribute to the grid. Having a nuclear reactor in every home only introduces a million unnecessary complications; it'd be just as logical to install a coal-burning generator in your back yard. Coal is a very cheap source, but it's too expensive to run your own generator. Nuclear power is the same; it's cheaper for everyone if we run nuclear power plants rather than having a reactor in every home.
Solar power on every roof, however, makes a lot of sense only because there is so little maintenance and doesn't require a fuel source. Why would you favor a nuclear reactor over solar power when in most cities you'll end up selling electricity back to the grid. Also, don't forget that solar power is a lot easier+cheaper to install than a nuclear reactor.
Solar power on every roof, however, makes a lot of sense only because there is so little maintenance and doesn't require a fuel source. Why would you favor a nuclear reactor over solar power when in most cities you'll end up selling electricity back to the grid. Also, don't forget that solar power is a lot easier+cheaper to install than a nuclear reactor.
So
Lifer
- Jul 2, 2001
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Because you will need those nuke plants anyway, to handle that overcast july day where the temp drops from 100 to 90 and your solar panel drops to 5% output -- all the air conditioners have to stay on somehow, or the elderly and infirm die. Nuke plants + hydro (or wind + pumped storage instead of hydro in a pinch) is the solution. Everything else is just money wasted to feel good.
HannibalX
Diamond Member
- May 12, 2000
- 9,359
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I think you have the right idea but I would choose solar power. I would LOVE to have a solar powered home.
There are people who would never allow the average citizen to have that much power though. The idea is to keep you relying on government and big business to survive these days.
Well for one thing solar is incredibly expensive these days, so it makes no sense as a grid level energy source. Secondly, it will NEVER make sense to have distributed electrical generation, the high capital costs and inefficiencies in converting and storing power at such small levels is absurd. The electrical grid is 90% efficient, really very little power is lost even when it is going hundreds of miles, so it makes WAAY more sense to set up huge solar arrays in certain location where economies of scale can be utilized and then pipe the power in to everyone house. That being said, there ain't no law saying you can't have a solar powered home, if you want one so much go out and buy one.
NOTE: I guess in some cities there might actually be a law against solar panels making the area look unattractive or some cr@p like that, but I find that unlikely unless you live in rich ass neighborhood area.
As for these whole "battery discovered with 10X storage capacity", or "new solar panels now 1$/watt", its not really fair to compare some results in the lab with presently available means. If you want to do that then compare them to generation IV reactors not 30 year reactors.
HannibalX
Diamond Member
- May 12, 2000
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I'm trying to see your point in relation to my post, but there really isn't one.
I never said solar should be used for grid power. I think thats a terrible idea.
I never said anything about solar being used for distributed power. I think it's a terrible idea.
It would be nice to have a completely independent power source for a home, not connected to anyone, not shared with anyone in any way. Completely independent.
Someday I might build a home that runs on solar power.
Colt45
Lifer
- Apr 18, 2001
- 19,720
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I only skimmed the thread, cause i'm tired. but the rover, and all space shit, and all the russian lighthouses, etc... it's nuclear decay.. generating heat, and a thermocouple. it's not a reactor, and it doesn't make much power. the life isn't that long, and the dead thing is still radioactive. do you want to see Pu or Sr isotopes or whatever else in a small town dump?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...ermoelectric_generator
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...ermoelectric_generator
Jeff7
Lifer
- Jan 4, 2001
- 41,596
- 20
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Fusion, baby! I tells ya, fusion will be the future. It might be a few more decades before they can get it to be commercially viable, but that just looks to me like the solution to our energy needs in the centuries to come. Yes, there will be increased use of wind, tidal, and solar power, but we'll still need reliable energy sources to fill in when the wind is calm, and the sun is on the other side of the planet. Fusion reactions won't produce any of the long-lived radioactive waste of fission reactions, and we've got loads of deuterium in the oceans, or Helium 3, if you care to set up mining operations on The Moon.
There's also a lot of money to be made in selling solar panels, the associated electronics, and possibly a battery bank with a grid-tie inverter. It's also a free economy. If someone restricts it here, China's just going to manufacture it anyway. Solar panels on every building, and even in space surrounding them - that's a HUGE area, and lots of panels. Yes, the tired old power industry will fret about it, possibly like the RIAA is throwing a tantrum about its obsolescence, or how the MPAA freaked out when VCRs came on the scene. They'll piss and moan, but eventually, they'll find that the future can bring new revenue streams, with different sources.
Here we go - Nanosolar, selling panels, which should sell for $1/watt. Continued research will continue to improve upon this.
Even some oil companies are starting to invest in solar - Shell purchased Siemens Solar several years ago.
To spell it out the point pertaining to you are as follows:
1. running your home on solar completely independent of anyone else is incredibly expensive and inefficient
2. if you wanna do it anyways go right ahead, but large scale implementations are cheaper and more reliable for EVERY power source including solar
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