Really good idea? or really goofy one? widespread small fission reactors

[fairytalefox]

Big reactors are "safe", but still they have issues once over time. All the waste/fuel management is still a problem.

As far as I know the only problem with waste management is crazy greenish activists who always try to derail trains transporting that waste. Nothing new: you have crazy people, you have problems.

They might be safe from direct attack or accidents in the surface, the radiation can not escape to the atmosphere.. But the water we drink or the one that we use for irrigation still comes from underground.

"Underground" where active waste is supposed to be buried (one kilometer deep into solid basalt/granite mass) and "underground" where water comes from (aquifer) are two completely different types of underground. Nuclear physicists in general are less stupid than crazy greenish activists.

This is not the energy solution for earth, because is still fission which it comes with many flaws, so they never will reach mass production, so the cost would not drop much.

This is not like solar panels or wind turbines, where they are really made with mass production techniques, that is why they drop so much the cost and they keep doing it.

Solar panels production is dirty as heck. The only reason you don't care about it is because you don't live in a country they are produced by. That country and it's exotic social structure and demographics is also the only reason for these panels being so cheap. These structure and demographics won't last forever.

Most of panels installed aren't old enough to require proper recycling. This day will come. And there will be a problem.

These "renewable" solar and wind power plants actually make us build more peaking power plants powered with fossil fuels.

But of course, all of this is totally insignificant. Because such nukelar, much bad, wow.

[Nibb31]

Widespread small reactors would be a bad idea. Nuclear power is safe, as long as it's protected with security measures and centralized. Letting radioactive matter out in the wild, accessible to the public, would be thousands of Goiania accidents waiting to happen.

Edited May 21, 2015 by Nibb31

[AngelLestat]

As far as I know the only problem with waste management is crazy greenish activists who always try to derail trains transporting that waste. Nothing new: you have crazy people, you have problems.

yeah, I imagine they are also guilty for all oil spills in the world... keep reading fairies tales...

Kyshtym disaster

"Underground" where active waste is supposed to be buried (one kilometer deep into solid basalt/granite mass) and "underground" where water comes from (aquifer) are two completely different types of underground. Nuclear physicists in general are less stupid than crazy greenish activists.

You are talking of the Yucca Mountain or the reactors?

1 km deep to install the reactors? is that mentioned in the video?

If that is the case, then I dont see much problem with the safety, but not sure how they deal with the drill cost and heat transfer efficiency.

Solar panels production is dirty as heck. The only reason you don't care about it is because you don't live in a country they are produced by. That country and it's exotic social structure and demographics is also the only reason for these panels being so cheap. These structure and demographics won't last forever.

You wanna bet? solar panels will keep loweing cost and become more clean with the time.. Carbon will remplace silicon in few years.

These "renewable" solar and wind power plants actually make us build more peaking power plants powered with fossil fuels.

More into the future you need storage which cost it will drop faster than solar. Today you can use the existing fossil plants to that purpose, which they on and off even without renewable energy sources, and the biggest cost of a thermal plant is the fuel.

[steve_v]

Miniaturizing a reactor has the advantage of simplifying decay heat removal - the main 'problem' with large scale reactors in, e.g. a natural disaster where grid power is lost and/or the plant is damaged... but you loose the economies of scale & the security of a large plant.

Fuel reprocessing, as mentioned earlier, is a workable thing. If the politics would just go away. The issue with spent fuel is that it's not being reprocessed, hence the transport and storage concerns.

There are even technologies to transmute the nastier non-reusable products... admittedly only (AFAIK) one experimental plant, and that's not really getting anywhere at the moment for lack of funding and *politics*.

The real elephant in the room is putting radioactive materials where Joe Public can get at them, not because he might make a bomb, but because he might irradiate himself and others trying.

If a reactor is going to be installed without fences, guards & IDs, it would also have to be engineered in such a way that nobody can claim the Darwin Awards entry "Attempted to dismantle reactor with chisel" i.e. completely, provably idiot-proof.

Yes we could make these, but I doubt the safety police or the tree-huggers would stand for it. And some fool would find a way to kill themselves with one sooner or later.

All that is of course irrelevant, because the FUD is too strong. It doesn't matter how safe or economical you make 'em, the politics will stomp the idea - for some reason anything with nuclear in the name is really scary to those that don't understand the engineering involved.

Of course, going against (mis)informed public opinion is political suicide.

To me, the ideal mix with current technology is probably going to be centralised fission + decentralised renewables.

Edited May 21, 2015 by steve_v

[theend3r]

Nuclear has fewer overall deaths associated with it relative to any other form of power (excepting the chernobyl accident which was the result of really bad design and bad management).

Actually it has fewest deaths even when you include Chernobyl. People probably fall off wind turbines or somehow die while producing and managing solar p.p. rather often.

[mattinoz]

If you consider Every large office building has back up power to service critical functions in a power blackout, On top of that tenants in those buildings are running backed up server rooms and demanding the base building provide un-intrupted power.

Most have diesel generator in the basement and tonne of fuel just sitting there as that has the fastest response time. The newest ones have a full time power generator on site. So move from Diesel to Natural Gas, plus add solar maybe some wind to maximize production.

To me this would be the key market for a Micro-Nuc. Plus Industrial and Data centres that also have a high level of "reliable/redundant" on site demand. Plus they have the sophistication and security to manage it even in though it bound to be highly automated anyway.

[blou04]

For a large enough building, what is the difference between a tanker-sized diesel generator and a nuclear submarine-sized nuclear reactor.

Of course leaving isotopes behind a simple door is asking for a disaster. Each of those autonomous reactors are buried 10 or 20 m deep (judging from his schemaics) inside a dedicated building and is to be kept under permanent overwatch. But i suppose datacenters don't stay open to the public, there's already a security system. Odds are, they have on site engineers taking care of the idling generators, remplace them with nuclear engineers. It's totally the same structural foootprint.

Current solar panels rely quite heavily on rare earth, wich a a ecological nightmare. Wait before we get ZnO based ones before praying them.

[steve_v]

For a large enough building, what is the difference between a tanker-sized diesel generator and a nuclear submarine-sized nuclear reactor.

The reactor creates far less environmental damage?

Wherever you put them, gen IV designs (molten salt reactors, gas coolant loops, thorium cycle breeders, etc.) make most of the problems with current fission power plants go away.

The technology has been progressing quietly for some time now but nobody's buying. Because scary invisible death. And they're still bloody expensive.

Probably still a bit big for a basement ATM though. Soon^TM.

Edited May 21, 2015 by steve_v