US Military Seeks Comments on Its Plan to Build a Small, Transportable Nuclear Reactor (apnews.com) 240
America's Department of Defense "is taking input on its plan to build an advanced mobile nuclear microreactor prototype at the Idaho National Laboratory in eastern Idaho," reports the Associated Press:
The department began a 45-day comment period on Friday with the release of a draft environmental impact study evaluating alternatives for building and operating the microreactor that could produce 1 to 5 megawatts of power. The department's energy needs are expected to increase, it said. "A safe, small, transportable nuclear reactor would address this growing demand with a resilient, carbon-free energy source that would not add to the DoD's fuel needs, while supporting mission-critical operations in remote and austere environments," the Defense Department said.
The draft environmental impact statement cites President Joe Biden's January 27 executive order prioritizing climate change considerations in national security as another reason for pursuing microreactors. The draft document said alternative energy sources such as wind and solar were problematic because they are limited by location, weather and available land area, and would require redundant power supplies. The department said it uses 30 terawatt-hours of electricity per year and more than 10 million gallons (37.9 million liters) of fuel per day. Powering bases using diesel generators strains operations and planning, the department said, and need is expected to grow during a transition to an electrical, non-tactical vehicle fleet. Thirty terawatt-hours is more energy than many small countries use in a year.
The department in the 314-page draft environmental impact statement said it wants to reduce reliance on local electric grids, which are highly vulnerable to prolonged outages from natural disasters, cyberattacks, domestic terrorism and failure from lack of maintenance. The department also said new technologies such as drones and radar systems increase energy demands...
The Defense Department said a final environmental impact statement and decision about how or whether to move forward is expected in early 2022. If approved, preparing testing sites at the Idaho National Lab and then building and testing of the microreactor would take about three years.
The draft environmental impact statement cites President Joe Biden's January 27 executive order prioritizing climate change considerations in national security as another reason for pursuing microreactors. The draft document said alternative energy sources such as wind and solar were problematic because they are limited by location, weather and available land area, and would require redundant power supplies. The department said it uses 30 terawatt-hours of electricity per year and more than 10 million gallons (37.9 million liters) of fuel per day. Powering bases using diesel generators strains operations and planning, the department said, and need is expected to grow during a transition to an electrical, non-tactical vehicle fleet. Thirty terawatt-hours is more energy than many small countries use in a year.
The department in the 314-page draft environmental impact statement said it wants to reduce reliance on local electric grids, which are highly vulnerable to prolonged outages from natural disasters, cyberattacks, domestic terrorism and failure from lack of maintenance. The department also said new technologies such as drones and radar systems increase energy demands...
The Defense Department said a final environmental impact statement and decision about how or whether to move forward is expected in early 2022. If approved, preparing testing sites at the Idaho National Lab and then building and testing of the microreactor would take about three years.
Nothing new, the Army did this in 1954 (Score:5, Informative)
I considered applying for operator training in 1970.
Re: (Score:2)
It is a safe bet that any new design won't suffer from the prompt criticality flaws in this, but I still think it is a bad idea.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And the Air Force did it in 1955 [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
More of donation.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Technically none because Congress hasn't done a formal declaration of war since WWII.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/... [congress.gov]
Authorization for Use of Military Force - Authorizes the President to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations, or persons.
States that this Act is intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of the War Powers Resolution.
I don't why you idiots think there is a special War Declaration Form to be filled out in triplicate. Every single time that Congress grants military authority under the War Powers Act, they've declared "war." They just don't use that word. Because, they don't have to use a certain word!
Re:Nothing new, the Army did this in 1954 (Score:5, Insightful)
The US military has accomplished the goals that its political controllers have set it out to.
They have fought their limited wars within the constraints that they were allowed, and maintaned bazillions to 1 kill-to-death ratios that were expected against the village dwellers they were pit against.
You can say that the US lost political will to continue murdering poor ass folks on the other side of the planet, several times that campaigns to do so were engaged in, but to say the US military "lost" is lame, bordering on fucking stupid.
It's like saying the Germans never took France because there were always guerillas there fighting.
Re:Nothing new, the Army did this in 1954 (Score:5, Insightful)
They were removed from power, and killed in frankly gross numbers.
After decades, the US got tired of fighting the remnants, made an agreement with them to let them have their way as long as they didn't piss us off again, and promptly stepped aside as they assfucked the pathetically weak puppet regime we installed.
Either way, mission was accomplished. The "Democracy Building"? Of course that failed. It always does. Always has, in any situation where we didn't literally bomb the population back to the stone age.
Re: Nothing new, the Army did this in 1954 (Score:3)
Democracy building doesn't always fail. What it does take is a requirement to basically make the nation a vassal nation for 50 years. So that the losers who fought the war are all dead(old age included). And you have 2-3 generations who may not like us but at least don't hate us.
Unfortunately everyone forgets the you have to stick it out 50 year rule.
Still Afghanistan had 20 years 5 of them fairly stable. While not long enough. Showed what could happen without the Taliban. As things descend under Taliba
Re: (Score:3)
The militaries (US, UK) failed.
Nope.
They ended up killing a lot of civilians, which turned people against them.
They operated within the collateral damage requirements given to them.
They abandoned the translators and other folk who helped them, despite being told to protect them.
This has all been on the civilian governments.
They failed to develop a viable Afghan army, and left behind large amounts of military equipment that is now in the hands of the Taliban.
Viability in this instance was a matter of will to fight. That's not something they can develop. The propping up of a puppet regime and then trying to make it survive is always a losing battle. That's not on the military. They do as commanded.
If anyone had really cared about that equipment, there were things to do about it. The uncomfortable fact is, what you call a failure, they call "
Re: (Score:3)
Same with poppy production.
**Trivia Alert**
The Taliban had essentially wiped out opium production in Afghanistan prior to the invasion, the only areas where it was still being produced were under the control of the US-allied "northern warlords". Production had been shifted to Colombia, Mexico, and back to Southeast Asia and the price had skyrocketed. Since the invasion every single year but one was a new all-time record of opium production in the country (and that one year was because of crop failure in part of the country), and th
Re: (Score:2)
> Would a micro nuclear reactor have changed any of those outcomes?
If micro nuclear reactors were already in use in the US military, the Taliban would now be the largest power producer in the middle east.
Re:Nothing new, the Army did this in 1954 (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Nothing new, the Army did this in 1954 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
If you're referring to our stupid fucking adventures- I mean "authorized uses of military force" in Asia where we go through, waste a few million people, and come home... Well, force was authorized, lots of people we didn't like were murdered with extreme prejudice, and then we came home.
Were the political goals always achieved? Na, not really.
But that's to be expected when the war is entirely political in nature anyway, with political constraints on it.
They already have that, and the experts to run it (Score:2)
Admittedly they seem to only want to transport them by water, but isn't the most recently built portable nuclear power plant pretty mobile? I think they nicknamed it after a former president. And I'm reliably informed that the people who run those mobile nuclear power plants are a great recruitment pool for operators of normal utility reactors.
ps, for anyone ill-informed enough to not understand, an additional hint: those portable reactors have the world's second-largest air force to defend them.
Re: (Score:2)
Naval reactors are far too big.
The Army is looking for something in the 1 to 5 megawatts (electrical) range.
Enough to power, say a large main battle tank. [wikipedia.org]
They are already covered in depleted uranium armour, so why not go the whole hog?
Re: (Score:2)
naval ship reactors are useless inland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademik_Lomonosov [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Wrong, that needs waterway to go anywhere.
I didn't say it doesn't need a waterway; I simply reacted to the claim that it's "useless inland". Clearly it's not.
I can't believe the number of people piping up here about naval reactors which are hundreds of tons. Do they think all reactors are alike? that you can pop one in and have a nuclear aircraft? pffft.
You primarily can't have a nuclear aircraft because you have no mass budget for shielding. We can make very small cores but we can't shield them without appreciable mass around them which doesn't go down a lot just because the core is smaller.
Re: (Score:2)
yes it is utterly useless away from a huge river that can support barge weighing hundreds of tons. Clearly you were silly to even bring up as being relevant to this article's microreactors that can fit in semitruck.
More to the point, people bringing up any naval reactors are silly.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
that is exactly what is being proposed, into semi trailer or seavan.
silly is not reading up before commenting
Re: They already have that, and the experts to run (Score:2)
Re: They already have that, and the experts to run (Score:2)
But what about a nuclear-powered twin hulled zeppelin?
Re: (Score:2)
Atomstroyexport are offering a version of their RITM-200 marine ship reactor as a land-based small modular reactor (SMR). No-one has ordered any though.
The Soviet Union flew space-based nuclear reactors for radar satellites which were definitely "mobile" and they were small enough to fit on a truck if the demand was there. There are also Radioisotope Thermal Generators (RTGs) like the ones in the Mars rovers which are definitely mobile but they don't produce a lot of power.
Re: (Score:2)
Now you're being silly on the other end of the scale, the soviet satellite reactors put on half a kilowatt. Not relevant to this article.
This article is about reactor transportable in semi trailer with megawatt or more of power.
Re: (Score:2)
Now you're being silly on the other end of the scale, the soviet satellite reactors put on half a kilowatt. Not relevant to this article.
Up to 5kW by the end, but ya. And massing at 320kg. Laughable in the context of the article, and not practical even for their intended use.
Re: (Score:2)
5kW, that's about what those bicycle party beer wagons run.
https://kunversion-frontend-bl... [amazonaws.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The target is 1 to 5, making the archaic soviet design between 76% and 780% too low in energy density.
I'm not arguing against the concept of small nukes that fit on trailers.
I'm pointing out people who say "It's been done before" are idiots.
Re: (Score:2)
The Soviet Union flew space-based nuclear reactors for radar satellites which were definitely "mobile" and they were small enough to fit on a truck if the demand was there.
You're thinking of the TOPAZ series.
They made 5kW and weighed 320kg.
There are better and easier ways to get 5kW of power out of 320kg of mass.
There are also Radioisotope Thermal Generators (RTGs) like the ones in the Mars rovers which are definitely mobile but they don't produce a lot of power.
We're discussing fission reactors, not decay heat thermoelectric generators.
Re: (Score:2)
There are better and easier ways to get 5kW of power out of 320kg of mass.
Just install a wave generator in the pool and have CowboyNeal do a bellyflop!
Re: (Score:2)
Read up; a sem-trailer, a seavan is EXACTLY what they are talking about and have in mind. And yes, self-contained and ready to go after assembling electrical distribution said too.
Talk to the Navy. They are experts. (Score:3)
Re:Talk to the Navy. They are experts. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
That's actually concerning. It's like an IT manager saying their data storage is so reliable that they've never had to restore from backups. If the navy really never used the facility then how do they know it works? Surely they must have had regular drills that used all the equipment.
Re: Talk to the Navy. They are experts. (Score:2)
You want an answer an IT manger would give? I don't know why that would make you feel better, but here goes.
"Yes, we test our backups."
Um there, feel secure yet?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Wrong, different kind of reactor, those aren't portable and have nothing to do with the type of reactor being discussed.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Nonsense, we've lost two nuclear submarines and we don't know the details.
Re: (Score:2)
Absolutely false, unknown what happened in either case, only speculation.
Re: (Score:3)
Both subs exceeded crush depth, and we have no fucking idea why.
For the Thresher, we have some garbled communications from the sub that indicate that it was bow-up and sinking, but no explanation as to why.
For the Scorpion, all we know is we heard a couple of loud BOOMs.
There are a ton of hypotheses about what happened on both, but the fact is, there isn't any good evidence to come to any kind of reasonable conclusion.
Re: (Score:2)
false
in case of Scorpion report concluded with ""The certain cause of the loss of the Scorpion cannot be ascertained from evidence now available."
in case of Thresher speculation is reactor might have SCRAMed from shorting of circuitry, but again unknown.
Neither sub's case of failure is known.
Re: (Score:2)
I was in the navy when the Scorpion went down and was on a sub myself out of Charleston and I read the reports.
You're a liar.
The official Navy report of the cause is "an unexplained catastrophic event occurred"
Re: (Score:2)
We do know that it wasn't because of the reactors and there was a definitive report of the cause. I was in the navy when the Scorpion went down and was on a sub myself out of Charleston and I read the reports.
Liar! If you'd read the reports and were characterizing them accurately for us, you'd have black helicopters circling and you'd have been hauled off in a windowless van by now.
Cooling a Serious Issue (Score:5, Insightful)
However, for humanitarian missions, such a reactor would be incredibly useful. You could deploy one or more to power towns cut off from the grid. This would allow you to use local infrastructure like hospitals by quickly restoring power.
1-5 megawatts is a lot of "portable" power (Score:2)
I believe Toshiba has designs for a nuclear reactor that would fit in a cargo container, but I suspect it doesn't output this much power. They also have another that is buried underground that is small but produces megawatts of power.
Re:1-5 megawatts is a lot of "portable" power (Score:4, Interesting)
You can fit up to about a 3MW diesel generator in a shipping container (it usually needs extra external bits to actually function though). An M1 Abrams Tank has a 1.25MW engine.
Not quite sure how much I like the idea of a nuclear powered tank, but the 1-5MW range is a very functional tactical role for the US military. It would be great to see some success with it— you could really simplify supply chain logistics. A 1MW engine-generator needs about a tanker full of diesel each week.
Cut first (Score:2, Interesting)
Rather than policing the world and spending more than the next several countries COMBINED on our military, how about we first cut the military budget across the board by say, 50%, TO START with.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
It's not. That's a USD to USD comparison. This is why so many industries make it a matter to focus on some way on China.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Don't ask, don't tell (Score:2)
Seriously, just do it. Also, Slashdot, Twitter, and other social media comments don't count... except for this one.
Portable, 1 -5 MW? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I want the civilian version for my street (Score:2)
We have underground utilities except for a few hundred feet between the high tension right-of-way and our street that may as well be strung between tree branches. And we have enough houses to justify a megawatt power plant.
Re: (Score:2)
You have 1,000 houses on your street! Wow.
Re: I want the civilian version for my street (Score:2)
I have about 50 houses with electric stoves and cooktops. Peak load on Thanksgiving day is probably 200 kW from cooking something while the bird is in the oven. And maybe another 50 or 100 kW from normal appliances and lights.
Re: (Score:2)
You must have some oven.
My electric range only has two 2500W elements and two 1600W elements. The broiler is 3500W (and uses more juice than the bottom element, which can't be on at the same time). That adds up to a paltry 11.7KW, and almost exactly maxes out the 50A 240V circuit it's attached to.
The 800A breaker on your oven circuit must be elephantine. (Or maybe you've arranged 480V 3-phase service to your kitchen to cut down on the amperage?)
My whole house only averages 500W to 1KW over a month, dependin
Re: I want the civilian version for my street (Score:2)
Did you miss the part about the 49 other houses on the street that are going to be maxing out their 50a circuits all at once?
Re: (Score:2)
As a matter of fact, yes.
Re: (Score:2)
You might be surprised just how little most homes actually consume, even at peak. I can do 48A/12kW for my EV charger, but the rest of the house struggles to pull more than 8A/2kW.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course, 98% of the day, those aren't running at anywhere near peak draw, and most of the time they're turned off. But the powergrid needs to be able to supply that much power, not just for me, but for the rest of the street too.
can they not remeber previous efforts? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Look up the SL-1 incident,
Also in eastern Idaho. Is this the same site and same group?
I trust they've learned their lesson and won't put a control rod in the center and end up with it being the whole control rod functionality, like the SL-1.
One word comes to mind (Score:2)
while supporting mission-critical operations in remote and austere environments
Taliban [baaghitv.com]
open source ? (Score:2)
Remembering that the earth is threatened by global warming and that clean energy is part of the solution, is the Department of Defense going to keep this design to itself or are they going to share it with the world?
The beauty of a standard design with standard parts that are interchangeable and open source so that makers worldwide could support the design is breathtaking.
It would be valuable across America of course where it could replace primitive fossil-burning plants. It would allow extras that haven't
Re: (Score:2)
Didn't Hitachi propose / build a 15MW 25 years ago (Score:2)
Didn't Hitachi propose (or even build?) a self-contained, concrete-sealed 15MW unit for use in places like Africa, etc?
IIRC, it got shouted down because NuClEaR iS EvUlZ or some such shit
Re: Didn't Hitachi propose / build a 15MW 25 years (Score:2)
Abandonware (Score:4, Insightful)
I just hope they don't leave one of these behind the next time we abandon Afghanistan...
An expensive target (Score:2)
Any safety/security? (Score:2)
I wouldn't do that.
That small nuclear reactor could actually be turned into a bomb device in several ways.
One is via the Internet. Old story new and long story short: stuxnet [wikipedia.org]-lile.
Another one is by physically hijacking it, breaking in and taking its control with people with rifles.
The worst part would happen in case there are several dozens of those devices scattered over an area: that would become a scattered bomb system.
To me it's a faulty design in its roots.
Re: (Score:2, Redundant)
What CAN happen is scary people with guns walking and stealing your reactor-grade fissile materials, and using it in breeding reactors to make more useful radioactive materials to create dirty bombs. Or if they're suicidal (which is likely, since they're stealing a
What they don't want you to know (Score:3)
Yes for Transportable Nuclear, No for Fixed (Score:3)
For fixed power, as part of a long term grid, Nuclear is just a regulatory mess, and other options are cheaper, and some are more environmentally sound.
However I am for Transportable Nuclear. Something that can be applied to a small city, That had been hit by a disaster (which are becoming more common now) To be able to be quickly placed in and deployed for a few weeks, months, years, while the permanent grid is rebuilt.
Sure the Transportable Nuclear will be highly regulated (probably extremely regulated) however their temporary status will be used for the emergency conditions as part of a better organized disaster response (As they will be owned and managed by the Military). Vs having different states with different laws and tolerances be provided unequally.
Re: (Score:3)
Because that would be a useless way to measure it.
Energy is measured in watt-hours. You use X amount of energy per year. That's a useful way to measure and budget energy usage.
If you multiply it out into watts, that just gives you an average power over the course of a year. That might be interesting for comparing things in a layman's sense, but it's useless.
=Smidge=
Re: (Score:2)
You use X amount of energy per year. That's a useful way to measure and budget energy usage.
If you multiply it out into watts, that just gives you an average power over the course of a year. That might be interesting for comparing things in a layman's sense, but it's useless.
So it's useless AND useful at the same time? Since both are measurements of power, which is energy divided by time.
Re: (Score:2)
> So it's useless AND useful at the same time?
It's "useful" in the same way that expressing the mass of a cloud as some quantity of elephants is "useful" - it gives a non-technical listener a mental image they might be able to relate to. For anything practical, like budgeting, logistics, or engineering alternatives, it's completely fucking useless.
Or, for a more apropos example, expressing how much power the US military uses as equivalent to some number of typical US households. e.g. "Enough to power X h
Re: (Score:2)
For anything practical, like budgeting, logistics, or engineering alternatives, it's completely fucking useless.
Bullshit. Engineering absolutely needs expressing energy flows over time as power.
Terawatt-hours is a meaure of energy. Terawatts is a measure of power. They are ostensibly not "both measurements of power."
Except I was talking about the "terawatt-hours per year" mentioned by the top comment. That's a measure of power, and a poor one. The standard unit of power is the watt.
Re: (Score:2)
I couldn't find anywhere that sold electricity by the watt. It's all watt-hours. Weird.
Re: (Score:2)
There are such arrangements. It was common in the early days of electricity. You're basically paying for the peak load you could draw. Sometimes this is still done when metering is impractical, usually in a remote location near to an unmanned power distribution location.
It's very similar to how network access is usually sold.
Re: (Score:2)
Electricity is not sold in watts. It's sold in watt-hours.
There is sometimes a "demand charge" which is based on watts, but that is a punitive fee to help dissuade people (usually commercial/industrial customers) from drawing lots of power which loads down the grid.
=Smidge=
Re: (Score:2)
> Bullshit. Engineering absolutely needs expressing energy flows over time as power.
You are trying so very, very hard to not understand...
> Except I was talking about the "terawatt-hours per year" mentioned by the top comment. That's a measure of power, and a poor one.
No, it's not. It's a measure of energy usage for a period of time. I know you're really hung up about this because if you divide it out the units are the same as power, but if you divide it out you get average power for the year which t
Re: (Score:2)
Energy is measured in watt-hours. You use X amount of energy per year. That's a useful way to measure and budget energy usage.
While the GP poster was wrong about using just watts to measure energy, they did have a point that watt-hours are a dumb measurement. Energy is actually measured in Joules. A Watt is a rate. Specifically it's one Joule per second. So, a Watt hour is one Watt for 3600 seconds. So, they're taking a rate that's based on a unit of energy and multiplying it by 3600 and cancelling the time portion to get a unit of energy again. One that happens to be 3.6 times a kiloJoule. Why, when you could just use kiloJoules/
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Seconds are fine as a unit of time though. Also, Joules are not dependent on time (arguable of course since things like heat or distance are ultimately dependent on time, so the ultimate definition could be considered time dependent) so there is no good reason not to use them to measure what they're intended to measure.
Re: (Score:2)
Energy is actually measured in Joules. A Watt is a rate. Specifically it's one Joule per second.
That's like saying that time is measured in hours, not minutes, even though you know that they're equivalent units.
Equivalent units are equivalent.
Why do so many neckbeards feel knowy and sciency when they pretend one equivalency is more true than the other? Even when they then explain that they're the same?
Re: (Score:2)
That's like saying that time is measured in hours, not minutes, even though you know that they're equivalent units.
Actually, it's more like saying that distance is measured in Kilometers not mps-hours (meter per second-hours). I kilometer is 1000 meters, but an mps-hour would be 3.6 kilometers. So, should we start measuring distances in mps-hours? You wouldn't find that needlessly obtuse?
Or, if you want to stick with your time example, then it's like measuring time in mps-kilometers, needlessly injecting a distance element into something that may not actually have anything do do with distance.
Equivalent units are equivalent.
Wow, really? Amazing. Next
Re: (Score:2)
that just gives you an average power over the course of a year.
And WTF do you think "terawatt hours per year" is? Exactly the same thing, power, except clumsier. Same units, just a constant ratio of hours per year.
1TWhr/yr = 114kW.
If you are going to be so long-winded, you might as well use power units based on the output of a farm animal. Who would do that?
Re:It's easy to build a portable reactor (Score:5, Informative)
> The cooling tower, not so much.
Well if the reactor is "only" outputting ~5 MW that's actually not too bad and could easily be a portable cooling apparatus, similar to a large radiator system. A cooler for a 1 MW natural gas piston-engine generator is, from personal first-hand experience, about 10Wx6Lx10H feet, by the outer walls of the unit.
> And you gotta keep the "reaction" from happening all at once, or there goes the neighborhood...
It is incredibly difficult to make a reliable nuclear bomb. It's literally impossible for a nuclear reactor of any design to detonate in a nuclear explosion. Steam explosion, sure, but not nuclear explosion. Even if you try to detonate a reactor by removing all the safeties and moderators, the prompt-critical state will blow the reactor core apart before you get it dense enough for The Big Boom. (See also: the SL-1 incident, 1961)
=Smidge=
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's literally impossible for a nuclear reactor of any design to detonate in a nuclear explosion.
Wrong.
It's not likely- for sure. But in a bad enough meltdown, the conditions for runaway supercritical fission are possible.
Chernobyl is a good example of one such scenario where there's good evidence that happened.
Now I know the point you're trying to make: That one of these things isn't going to go full Fat Man or Little Boy on us. No argument there.
But "It's literally impossible for..." was a dumb way to convey that.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)