Toshiba Builds 100x Smaller Micro Nuclear Reactor

[Tenten]

Source: _http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/next-energy-news-toshiba-micro-nuclear-12.17b.html

Toshiba Builds 100x Smaller Micro Nuclear Reactor

Toshiba has developed a new class of micro size Nuclear Reactors that is designed to power individual apartment buildings or city blocks. The new reactor, which is only 20 feet by 6 feet, could change everything for small remote communities, small businesses or even a group of neighbors who are fed up with the power companies and want more control over their energy needs.

The 200 kilowatt Toshiba designed reactor is engineered to be fail-safe and totally automatic and will not overheat. Unlike traditional nuclear reactors the new micro reactor uses no control rods to initiate the reaction. The new revolutionary technology uses reservoirs of liquid lithium-6, an isotope that is effective at absorbing neutrons. The Lithium-6 reservoirs are connected to a vertical tube that fits into the reactor core. The whole whole process is self sustaining and can last for up to 40 years, producing electricity for only 5 cents per kilowatt hour, about half the cost of grid energy.

Toshiba expects to install the first reactor in Japan in 2008 and to begin marketing the new system in Europe and America in 2009.

This kind of "de-centralized" energy production could be interesting if it's robust and safe.

 

[Snowalker]

This kind of "de-centralized" energy production could be interesting if it's robust and safe.

Are you serious? Please tell me that this was meant as a facetious comment as opposed to an endorsement of nuclear technology whose environmental consequences are well documented from uranium mining to the use of the "used" (read depleted) uranium in weapons of mass destruction.

 

[Tenten]

This kind of "de-centralized" energy production could be interesting if it's robust and safe.

Are you serious? Please tell me that this was meant as a facetious comment as opposed to an endorsement of nuclear technology whose environmental consequences are well documented from uranium mining to the use of the "used" (read depleted) uranium in weapons of mass destruction.

Yes. It could be interesting to provide useful and extensive energy to some places. Extracting fresh water for example (desalination in coastal areas).

 

[Peam]

This kind of "de-centralized" energy production could be interesting if it's robust and safe.

Are you serious? Please tell me that this was meant as a facetious comment as opposed to an endorsement of nuclear technology whose environmental consequences are well documented from uranium mining to the use of the "used" (read depleted) uranium in weapons of mass destruction.

I've sometimes wondered if the PTB might be fooling everyone as to how dangerous and hard to control this nuclear technology really is.

I'm thinking of nuclear submarines. Subs are a fairly enclosed environment, people living relatively close to a nuclear source, with all the potential danger and consiquences of swimming about in the oceans. It seems to me to be a lot more dangerous than a nuclear power station on dry land.

A worker in a N.P.station can go home after their shift. Not so a sailor who's holed up 24/7 in a sub.

Given the hype of the 'experts' of how dangerous nuclear power is, who in their right mind would consider living for extended periods of time in a sub?