RE: Kilopower Reactor
November 17, 2017 at 1:16 am
(This post was last modified: November 17, 2017 at 2:44 am by Anomalocaris.)
(November 16, 2017 at 11:35 pm)Fake Messiah Wrote: 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.
