Kilopower Reactor

[Fake Messiah]

There seems to be some optimism for clean future after all with Kilopower Reactor. While aimed at Mars and space missions to provide electricity because so far they expect it to yield from ranges from 1 kilowatt to 10 kilowatt this miniature nuclear power generator could be made to power cities on Earth because they also say:

“What we are striving to do is give space missions an option beyond RTGs, which generally provide a couple hundred watts or so,” Mason said. “The big difference between all the great things we’ve done on Mars, and what we would need to do for a human mission to that planet, is power. This new technology could provide kilowatts and can eventually be evolved to provide hundreds of kilowatts, or even megawatts of power.”

source article

[Anomalocaris]

There seems to be some optimism for clean future after all with Kilopower Reactor. While aimed at Mars and space missions to provide electricity because so far they expect it to yield from ranges from 1 kilowatt to 10 kilowatt this miniature nuclear power generator could be made to power cities on Earth because they also say:

“What we are striving to do is give space missions an option beyond RTGs, which generally provide a couple hundred watts or so,” Mason said. “The big difference between all the great things we’ve done on Mars, and what we would need to do for a human mission to that planet, is power. This new technology could provide kilowatts and can eventually be evolved to provide hundreds of kilowatts, or even megawatts of power.”

source article

I can not imagine kilowatt sized nuclear reactors could possibly be cost competitive with conventional or renewable generation on earth. Also giving each house a device containing several kilograms of uranium and a plumbing system full of liquid sodium seems to promise countless exciting challenges for DHS and FEMA, to say nothing of EPA.

[Fake Messiah]

Also giving each house a device containing several kilograms of uranium and a plumbing system full of liquid sodium seems to promise countless exciting challenges for DHS and FEMA, to say nothing of EPA.

Well I didn't mean every house would have one, but rather if one could eventually be made to give off make megawatts of power then you could put few together and power many districts if not whole towns. I mean if they claim that these small thing could make megawatts then their development should be number one priority.

And when it comes to cost competitiveness with conventional means, just remember how much oil and coal really costs us overall. It is the most expensive thing we could use. I mean just in Delhi it was recently reported how toxic air is there that airplanes can't land and you can imagine how that affects human health.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

"Don't dig up the big box of plutonium, Mark!"

[vorlon13]

mmmm plutonium . . . . .

[Anomalocaris]

Also giving each house a device containing several kilograms of uranium and a plumbing system full of liquid sodium seems to promise countless exciting challenges for DHS and FEMA, to say nothing of EPA.

Well I didn't mean every house would have one, but rather if one could eventually be made to give off make megawatts of power then you could put few together and power many districts if not whole towns. I mean if they claim that these small thing could make megawatts then their development should be number one priority.

And when it comes to cost competitiveness with conventional means, just remember how much oil and coal really costs us overall. It is the most expensive thing we could use. I mean just in Delhi it was recently reported how toxic air is there that airplanes can't land and you can imagine how that affects human health.

Department of energy is developing small modular nuclear reactors of 50 MW.  

The problem with nuclear reactors is precisely that the security and safety requirements around a 1 MW, a 50 MW or a 1000 MW reactor doesn’t differ by much.   But a 1000 MW reactor can prorate the fixed cost of safety and security over 1000 MWs.   An isolated 1 MW reactor by comparison would be stuck with fixed cost hundreds of times greater on a per MW basis.

This is why DOE decided the only way 50MW modular reactors could even pretend to make sense is to put 12 of them on a single site, inside a single containment building, thus effectively making it a single, but exceptionally complicated, 600 MW reactor.

This is why nuclear reactors for power generation keeps getting bigger, not smaller. The current generation of nuclear reactors are pushing 1500 MW each. Nuclear power does best as centralized bases loaded generation resources on large centralized power grids. Nuclear power is unlikely to be even remotely competitive as distributed generation on micro-grids.

[Fake Messiah]

I don't think we're on the same page here. This is new technology where whole device is smaller then human being. Reactor fuel is very safe and mildly radioactive. Uranium core is only 6 inches in diameter so I don't see that it has such security problems. If in time they do "evolve" to yield megawatts (instead of kilowatts) of power you put few of those somewhere underground and I think you can say it's pretty safe.

Or put one of those on a freighter ship (you know one of those that tugs containers from China to the rest of the world) I mean that would be great solution because those ships use such horrible heavy fuel oil that just one of those ships pollutes as 50 million cars and 15 of those ships pollutes like all the cars in the world, yet there are 60 000 to 90 000 of those ships in the oceans all the time. I mean talk about safety. When those ships come to the coast whole communities there get sick.

[Anomalocaris]

I don't think we're on the same page here. This is new technology where whole device is smaller then human being. Reactor fuel is very safe and mildly radioactive. Uranium core is only 6 inches in diameter so I don't see that it has such security problems. If in time they do "evolve" to yield megawatts (instead of kilowatts) of power you put few of those somewhere underground and I think you can say it's pretty safe.

Or put one of those on a freighter ship (you know one of those that tugs containers from China to the rest of the world) I mean that would be great solution because those ships use such horrible heavy fuel oil that just one of those ships pollutes as 50 million cars and 15 of those ships pollutes like all the cars in the world, yet there are 60 000 to 90 000 of those ships in the oceans all the time. I mean talk about safety. When those ships come to the coast whole communities there get sick.

1 kw is like 1.5 horsepower.  Your ordinary non-sports car engine can be upwards of 300 horsepower’s or 200 Kw.   To say this wonder reactor is smaller than a human is to say it is still larger than a electric motor or internal combustion engine with peak output 200 times more powerful.

Typical oceangoing freight ship has engines with effective outputs of 10 MW - 100 MW.  It would take anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 of these little man sized reactors to propel a real ocean going ship.

The notion that 1 ship pollutes like 50 million cars is bullshit.  Ships may use horrible fuel, but marine transportation is so fundamentally efficient in terms of fuel used per ton-mile achieved that the pollutants ship emits per ton-mile is a tiny fraction of any car, truck, or train.

[Minimalist]

Perhaps viable on Mars where sunlight is no where near as strong but on earth?  No way this can compete with solar.  Unless the oil companies figure out how to charge you for sunshine.

[AFTT47]

The notion is 1 ship pollutes like 50 million cars is bullshit.  Ships may use horrible fuel, but marine transportation is so efficient that the pollutants ship emits per ton-mile is a tiny fraction of any car or truck.

I'd like to see some numbers on that.

I agree that marine transport (like land rail) is efficient because of economy of scale and results in excellent ton-mile numbers but what are the absolute pollutant numbers we're looking at here?

Absolute numbers are important because we can dramatically reduce container ship emissions by installing kite sails on these things. Nuclear propulsion would be even better but I will concede there are probably more problems in the real world with nuclear power on civilian ships than can be realistically addressed.

I think you trivialize the problem of marine vessels burning bunker fuel though. That shit is AWFUL! Cleaning up large ships would go a long way to alleviating our climate problems.