Some of the Answer
 

John Vidal and Nick Rosen guardian.co.uk, Sunday November 9 2008 00.01 GMT The Observer, Sunday November 9 2008 Article historyNuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000 homes will be on sale within five years, say scientists at Los Alamos, the US government laboratory which developed the first atomic bomb.

The miniature reactors will be factory-sealed, contain no weapons-grade material, have no moving parts and will be nearly impossible to steal because they will be encased in concrete and buried underground.

The US government has licensed the technology to Hyperion, a New Mexico-based company which said last week that it has taken its first firm orders and plans to start mass production within five years. 'Our goal is to generate electricity for 10 cents a watt anywhere in the world,' said John Deal, chief executive of Hyperion. 'They will cost approximately $25m [£13m] each. For a community with 10,000 households, that is a very affordable $250 per home.'

Deal claims to have more than 100 firm orders, largely from the oil and electricity industries, but says the company is also targeting developing countries and isolated communities. 'It's leapfrog technology,' he said.

The company plans to set up three factories to produce 4,000 plants between 2013 and 2023. 'We already have a pipeline for 100 reactors, and we are taking our time to tool up to mass-produce this reactor.'

The first confirmed order came from TES, a Czech infrastructure company specialising in water plants and power plants. 'They ordered six units and optioned a further 12. We are very sure of their capability to purchase,' said Deal. The first one, he said, would be installed in Romania. 'We now have a six-year waiting list. We are in talks with developers in the Cayman Islands, Panama and the Bahamas.'

The reactors, only a few metres in diameter, will be delivered on the back of a lorry to be buried underground. They must be refuelled every 7 to 10 years. Because the reactor is based on a 50-year-old design that has proved safe for students to use, few countries are expected to object to plants on their territory. An application to build the plants will be submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission next year.

'You could never have a Chernobyl-type event - there are no moving parts,' said Deal. 'You would need nation-state resources in order to enrich our uranium. Temperature-wise it's too hot to handle. It would be like stealing a barbecue with your bare hands.'

Other companies are known to be designing micro-reactors. Toshiba has been testing 200KW reactors measuring roughly six metres by two metres. Designed to fuel smaller numbers of homes for longer, they could power a single building for up to 40 years.

Now I'm as pro-nuclear as anyone, but don't never say never. We're having Chernobyl-type events with Sony laptop batteries! Invent something idiot-proof, and someone else improves the idiots! :mad:

Seriously, I hope it works out. Only issue, as always, is disposing of the waste. Possibly you just leave the unit in situ when it wears out, if the unit is as stout as they say.

Many a slip twixt the cup and the lip ... :)

I'm pro-nuclear for certain...but the complexeties and potential hazards really lend themselves to economy-of-scale. Large centralized operations are more cost effecient in most situations anyway.

The biggest problem I see is the potential for such a unit to provide the raw materials for a dirty-bomb...it's not going to be economically feasible to provide the kind of 24/7 security found at large commercial plants. And that security is not TSA-caliber, it's mostly ex-SOF guys armed with military grade weapons, including heavy weapons.

Also I'm a big fan of centralized waste storage..the idea of abandoning such units in-place is ludicrously irresponsible. Also refueling operations are NOT trivial, and you would not want to conduct such operations in the immediate vicinty of a population center. Also, the spent core which is extracted during refueling would be ideal dirty-bomb material, and would be much easier to steal it in-transit than it would be to break into an operating unit.

Reactor cores, operational and spent, need to be maintained and secured as centrally as possible.

This is an interesting idea--I think I read in Popular Science that a Japanese company had a contract with one of the Aleutian Islands for a pocket nuke.

I think you'll see much more of this--call it the democratization of energy. Somebody, not the government, will figure out how to make solar and wind energy worth using. Somebody, not the government, will figure out how to make coal conversion to methanol doable in your garage. Somebody, not the government, will figure out a way to transmute radioactive waste material into a short term problem.

Hopefully the prospective inventors aren't going to a government school.

WW

Many communities in Alaska could benefit from a small reactor. Due to the spike in oil prices this summer many villages will be pay in excess of $10 per gallon until their next shipment after breakup.

Now that the price of oil has crashed all these alternative energy ideas will get pushed to the back burner again.

Interesting comment, this has been in the works since 2003 for this village, I don't know if it has been finalized yet. Lots of regulation to cut through.

Alaska Village Moves from Diesel to 'Micro-Nuke'

More details:
http://dwb.adn.com/front/story/4214182p-4226215c.html

Alaska might be the perfect proving ground for technology like this due to the remote nature of the reactor sites.

A part of the operation that I fly for has DC6s and C46s with fuel tanks for flying fuel to villages. McGrath Alaska didn't receive their end of season fuel barge due to an early freeze up (global cooling aka winter) and now they must have all the fuel that would have come on the barge flown in. The figure I heard was 300,000 gallons at about 5000 gallons a trip in a DC6, that's a huge expense. I'm not sure on the exact price of fuel delivered but if its say $7.00 a gallon that's $2.1 million that has to be absorbed by a village of less than 500. McGrath, Alaska - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The trickle effect of village fuel costs is already impacting Anchorage due to increases in school enrollment and demand of services for low income families that have moved in from the bush. It will be interesting to see how many villages become only seasonal fishing and mining camps.