US Plans "Disposable" Nuclear Batteries

holy_calamity writes "A US government program is in the works to design small nuclear reactors for use by developing countries. The work continues despite fears about security and nuclear proliferation. Plans include having reactors supplied with fuel by the US and other trusted nations, or to build reactors with their whole lifetime of fuel packaged securely inside — like a giant non-user replaceable radioactive battery.' '"

Proliferation?

[TFer_Atvar]

Why worry about proliferation? They're not going to be sending these things to Iran -- if they're ever built -- and any financially and technologically stable nation can already build nuclear weapons. There's over 100 research reactors operating around the world, hundreds more medical reactors, and all the power-generating ones as well. Sounds like a good plan to me.

Re:Whatever you do . . .

[msauve]

like this [radford.edu]?

It probably makes more sense than you think

[Gordonjcp]

Having nuclear reactors with a lot of common parts opens up a lot of possibilities. Never mind hassling Iran for having nuclear power, train their guys to use Western reactors and if they start getting a bit too good, steal the talent.

Why reinvent the wheel?

[irregular_hero]

Toshiba has already developed this as a viable technology and is in the process of deploying something like this in Alaska as part of an NSF-funded replacement of a diesel-fired powerplant.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_4S [wikipedia.org]

And Toshiba's not the only game in town as far as micro-reactors go. Why would the government spend a boatload to develop something that already exists commercially? Why not just allow countries to select the best commercial design that fits them and ease the regulatory barriers to permit easier US fueling of self-contained sub-50 megawatt reactors? Seems like the AEC is just caught flatfooted in response to new technology, that's all -- no need to develop anything, just rework the regulations to take into account new technologies.

Re:Excellent

[Gertlex]

Nuclear reactors have a lot of waste heat. Might as well use that heat directly for desalination, rather than using the generated electricity.

Not that I've ever bothered to look at how modern desalination is accomplished.

Re:Why reinvent the wheel?

[WindBourne]

First, this is in the range of 250 MW to 500 MW. Second, Toshiba has done nothing with theirs. Finally, the idea of these is to make it difficult to have a country use these for bomb making. Every country has no choice BUT to persue nuclear power plants. The reason is that EU and much of the west is about to slap a carbon tax on (there is no way around this; it is the only way to protect their industry AND drop their own carbon). But we can not have more NKs, Pakistans etc. running around. As it is, American republicans sold our nuke secrets to Turkey and Pakistan and that is why we have issues from the middle east in the first place.

This is bad

[chord.wav]

Have you noticed that it is the US that is planning the "solution" to a foreign problem? Did anyone ask for help in the first place? Or they are mandating it?

What if, say, Peru plans a solution to US health care problem and decides unilaterally to deploy that solution to the US?

Re:Proliferation?

[dbIII]

Why worry about proliferation?

It has been happening anyway and really is not related to devices like this. We don't have to worry about the Iranians wanting them either. Iran would also most likely be able to do something as good or better by this point since nuclear power research in the USA stalled long ago and is far behind the South African (pebble bed), Chinese and Russian technology that is available to the Iranians.

Re:FFS

[nbert]

Or we could just focus on improving the efficiency of solar and wind power generation.

At the current growth rate of the technologies you mentioned it simply isn't going to make a significant difference. Of course there is the possibility that improvements in efficiency will make up for it (by some miracle invention), but that's like betting on the slowest horse in a race because it offers the highest win - wouldn't do it with anything else but with some spare change I keep for entertainment.

The power consumption of devices is really important to me. For idealistic reasons I buy devices featuring high energy efficiency. Plus there is an economic dimension: In my country one kWh costs around $0.31 and one gallon is aroung $7.5. I must admit that the current dollar/euro ratio inflates these prices, but even if the exchange ratio was 1.30 the numbers would still look rather high. But even when I give preference to low-power devices I have no doubt that anything saved by me (and the western world in general) will be compensated by higher demand in emerging markets.

Btw: A high share of the prices mentioned above go into subvention of biofuel, wind- and solar-power. But even with high subventions the market share of regenerative energies is around 5% over here. In my very greenish opinion the best way to archive sustainability is the following: Tax energy consumption, but use the money coming from it for something else than subvention. This will make sure that demand is reduced on the customer side. On the production side legislation should regulate: Install a emission trading system like in Europe (but better) and sign international treaties like the Kyoto protocol. Producers could still use coal plants, but the economic benefit would strongly favor other sources of energy. I strongly believe that any other system will result in billions spend in nonsense.

Re:what do you think ships use

[kesuki]

the American system 'melted down' when the coolant pump seal melted and 'fused with the fissionable material, preventing coolant from circulating'

the obvious solution, is to not use a pump that requires a seal, or to design a seal that doesn't react to liquid sodium.

but it caused an unshielded test reactor to melt down, albeit in a desert, but it was the worst atomic accident that the government doesn't want people to remember.

Re:Proliferation?

[Firethorn]

Nuclear reactors of this size would be incredibly difficult to crack and create a dirty bomb without fatally irradiating themselves, much less avoid setting off every radiation detector in the area.

Besides, the most likely source of radioactive materials today for a dirty bomb is medical radiation sources.

NRM?

[qmaqdk]

I think you can draw many parallels between this and DRM (and the failure of it). You give people the object and want them to be able to use it only in a certain way, and not let them access the internals. It's flawed by design. You just can't do this without active monitoring of some sort.

Similarly, once it's out, it's out. With movies this means high quality piracy. With a nuclear reactor...

Re:Nukes NOW

[cdrguru]

Unfortunately if you listen to the environmental lobby long enough you will discover that it is pretty commonly thought that the very last thing we should be doing is to "lift people to western standards of living". Doing so will increase their resource usage, increase the waste being produced and generally contribute to the end of the Earth being a good place for animals to live.

I firmly believe that our new president, assuming McCain doesn't win, will side with the people that believe it would be better for the planet if more people were living like Bangledeshi farmers rather than the US exporting its lifestyle to other countries.

But your link is useless

[keineobachtubersie]

"Adjusting Aid Numbers to Factor Private Contributions, and more

David Roodman, from the CGD, attempts to adjust the aid numbers by including subjective factors PDF formatted document:

        * Quality of recipient governance as well as poverty;
        * Penalizing tying of aid;
        * Handling reverse flows (debt service) in a consistent way;
        * Penalizes project proliferation (overloading recipient governments with the administrative burden of many small aid projects);
        * and rewards tax policies that encourage private charitable giving to developing countries.

In doing so, the results (using 2002 data, which was latest available at that time) produced:"

With all due respect, your link uses the above factors to skew the numbers. The fact that they openly admit the numbers are subjective destroys their usefulness. I could skew the numbers any way I liked if you let me pick the variables.

"but those studies invariably count things like immigrants sending money home to their family"

Why wouldn't that be counted? Dismissing that out of hand is just as irresponsible as using "subjective" numbers to skew the data.

"As far as real aid goes, 90% of the money genuinely donated by generous Americans never makes it out of the country"

I'd like to see your source for this, if one exists.

"This meme is simply not true"

Well, if that is so you haven't proven it. If you thought a "reassessment" using "subjective" numbers was enough to do that, you need to "reassess" your thought process.