IMBY Pt 2: More Potent Boogaloo
August 14, 2008 - 1:36 pm
Irradiated by Stingray
Irradiated by Stingray
The nanonuke market is getting better and better. Hyperion Power Generation is a Santa Fe company working closely with Los Alamos National Labs to produce an even smaller nuclear battery than the Toshiba 4S I mentioned in yesterday’s post. Billed at roughly the size of a hot tub, these tiny little powerhouses will pump out about 27MW. Throw two in my back yard, and we should be able to power all of Los Alamos and White Rock combined. These need to be refueled every five years instead of every 30 or so, as with the 4S, but still.
My offer still stands: In My Back Yard. Please. Just, uh, hire someone else to handle the digging part. Those basalt boulders in the northwest corner are a bitch.
August 14th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
I want one.
I wonder how much they cost initially and over it’s lifetime.
August 14th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Could you expand on the actual electrical generating mechanism? Brief research on atomic batteries suggests that dragging 27 megawatts out of a nucular hot tub with no moving parts is a Pretty Neat Trick.
August 14th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
Hyperion is just talking about their reactor when they give the dimensions. The power generation equipment isn’t included. Note that they say 75 MW of heat energy or 25MW of electricity when attached to a steam turbine. Also, 33% efficiency is a bit high when dealing with a steam plant, unless you use a boiling water design and combine the primary and secondary loops. A more conservative (less radioactive) design would be pushing to get 20MW, unless it is put somewhere really cold. The previous design you mentioned is nice, though. I’m also impressed with the Indian plutonium/thorium design which triples the run time between refueling and the Chinese pebble bed design that uses helium for the primary loop (look, Ma, no radiation!).
August 15th, 2008 at 3:39 am
Heh.
I’ve been doing a bunch of film-making for the HiPER fusion experiments, with an eye towards using laser initiated fusion as a commercial power source.
The entire goal of the communications arm can be broken down into “Stopping people crapping themselves and running screaming at the Scary Words”.
Nuclear, fusion, fission – even lasers (thanks to the small but well-publicised number of drooling meatheads who dazzled everyone from cats to airline pilots) are words that just cause muggles to go into Full Batshit Insanity Mode.
I had a fun time watching peoples’ reactions when I pointed out that naturally-occouring uranium, identical in every meaningful detail to “depleted uranium”, is about as common as silver in the ground.
Fear. One person who was sat raised their feet off the ground! And these people have degrees, and are allowed to vote.
See, that scares me. There are an awful lot of different power-generating systems, most of which are pretty darn good ideas with solid science and engineering behind ‘em, that just can’t get off the ground because of the Fear Words.
Once again, humanity is it’s own biggest impediment.
August 15th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Hell, sign me up for one or two! I’ve got space!
tweaker