Miniature Nuclear Plants Set to Seek Approval for Work in U.S

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601072&sid=aNWxvJD2xhZ8#

May 17 (Bloomberg) -- Manufacturers of refrigerator-sized nuclear reactors will seek approval from U.S. authorities within a year to help supply the world’s growing electricity demand.

John Deal, chief executive officer of Hyperion Power Generation Inc., intends to apply for a license “within a year” for plants that would power a small factory or town too remote for traditional utility grid connections.

The Santa Fe, New Mexico-based company and Japan’s Toshiba Corp. are vying for a head start over reactor makers General Electric Co. and Areva SA in downsizing nuclear technology and aim to submit license applications in the next year to U.S. regulators. They’re seeking to tap a market that has generated about $135 billion in pending orders for large nuclear plants.

“We’re building iPhones when the nuclear industry has traditionally built mainframe computers,” said Deal. Hyperion has more than 150 purchase commitments from customers such as mining and telecom companies, provided its technology gets licensed for operation, he said.

radioactive "dirty bomb" materials?

I just posted this to put it out there, but I agree.

Heck you don't even need a bomb, you could just run a semi into one of them.

I just find it funny that this guy is trying to revive the 1950's corpse of "nuclear everything!"

excuse me, I have to go brush my teeth with my nuclear powered toothbrush...

Of course standard NRC regulations regarding license, application, building, and security of the site would still apply.

of July parade.

You could do the same thing with a semi full of medical isotope waste and it likely is far less guarded, isn't underground, and isn't inside a sealed reactor.

Also how long do you think it would take for terrorist to attack power plant, kill everyone, stop the reactor, wait for it to cool down enough to open containment, figure out how to disconnect reactor from support equipment, lift it out of containment and load it on a truck?

I am thinking slightly more than a few minutes. So the US govt won't respond to a terrorist attack on a plant. They will pull off this attack without a single person notifying authorities? Are they ninja terrorists?

However it will take quite some time to accomplish all the task necessary for converting an active hot functional reactor into radioactive charge loaded on a semi.

Isolated in all relative.
Isolated as in 1 hour response time or isolated as in 2 day response time?

I mean we aren't talking about a 5 minute bank robbery here. Decay heat on a reactor is pretty intense for first 24 or so hours.
You can't even open containment until reactor has been shutdown for 24+ hours. The heat and overpressure is simply to intense.

Well so it medicial and industrial nuclear waste.

Still regarding spent fuel this is why even if we don't build a Yucca Mountain in next decade we should be some interim length waste centers.

I mean even if nuclear power "ended today" (as in no new plants, no extensions, no uprates) the remaining plants will still run for decades rights?

Moving all that waste to some high security regional interim length centers would be a good idea.

By iterim length I mean DOE definition of a facility designed to house waste for 50-200 years as an interm step between onsite storage and final deep geological repository.

Something like this:


Waste is already stored onsite in uniform sized dry casks:

I believe that the Hyperion type reactor is based on uranium nitride fuel, and is designed to be carried on a truck bed both before and after use. The reactor is designed to never be refueled.

The burn up of the reactor is very, very, very high, on the order of 100MW-day/ton HM, in comparison to figures of less than half that for most commercial reactors.

High burnups reduce the amount of nuclear material that needs to be handled.

The Toshiba variety, IRRC, the 4S, is a lead bismuth type. I'm not sure about the heat exchange/coolant in the Hyperion design.

The reactivity in some proposals of this type is managed by an elegant change of composition with burnable neutron poisons. Erbium has been proposed as has neptunium for this purpose. I personally like neptunium better from a resource utilization standpoint.

Some people blather non-proliferation nonsense about this point, neptunium, but personally I think non-proliferation risks are vastly overstated in every case.

The papers of Ehud Greenspan at UC Berkeley cover this class of reactors quite extensively.

I'm kind of ambivalent about this class myself. I like the concept, but I think what the world needs now is lots and lots and lots and lost of big reactors because climate change is a big problem.

I note this class of reactor would be excellent for space missions.

Most remote communities run on diesel right now, and that is not a good thing.