Portable nuclear reactor as a green alternative?
Hyperion Power Generation is promoting a new design for a small scale nuclear power system developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory that is being touted as a cleaner, greener method for providing nuclear power. “The portable nuclear reactor is the size of a hot tub. It’s shaped like a sake cup, filled with a uranium hydride core and surrounded by a hydrogen atmosphere. 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.”
But the developers don’t like to call it a “reactor” (in part, no doubt, because of the numerous negative connotations that “reactor” carries).
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.”
There are a lot of questions that need to be asked – What to we do with the waste at the end of those five years? Where are we going to get all the uranium necessary? These are nuclear questions that nuclear experts tend to not want to answer.
We certainly hope that there is a lot more information forthcoming before anyone decides to start deploying and manufacturing this on any scale.
“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.” Santa Fe Reporter
It seems that many are prepared to do anything about the energy crisis except change their patterns of energy consumption.
Tags: nucleaur power
