This mini reactor seems promising ...but scary.

Rolls Royce (the 'planes' one, not the 'cars' one) is making a mini-reactor. Its a portable nuclear reactor, about the size of a standard shipping container or semi-truck trailer, that puts out between 1 and 10 MWs. A megawatt can power between a few hundred and several hundred homes, or one reasonably sized factory or industrial complex. The primary goal (and source of funding) seems to be military- for the powering of rapid deployment forward operating bases. But there is also work being done toward making it a useful power source and means of propulsion in space exploration and colonization.

Rolls-Royce Is Building A Micro Nuclear Reactor: Here's How It Plans To Use It (msn.com)

Which is all really cool.

But from what I can tell, its still the ol 'uranium steam engine', albeit a very small and efficient one. The uranium 'particles' are supposedly very heavily shielded and protected, with the whole unit "requiring minimal interaction or intervention, reducing training and in-service load."

Micro-Reactor | Rolls-Royce

Does that mean it can't melt down? Or its just very hesitant to melt down?

My biggest beef with nuclear power is that it works great until humans are put in the equation. Humans are the ones that neglect maintenance for profit, ignore leaks, build reactors on major fault lines and probably won't show up for their very important job of keeping it from going critical, if the economy falls apart.

An autonomous, portable nuclear reactor that just shuts off instead of exploding radiation into the environment if people stop paying attention it, would be AMAZING.

But I dunno if this is that. If not, its still probably a step in that direction. But also I don't like the idea of just having a bunch of things sitting around everywhere waiting to be neglected if they can still degrade into a catastrophe. But other than that, this could be a very viable alternative to fossil fuels.

 

If it contains uranium 235 and uranium 238 and they are brought close enough to generate heat it can melt down.

I think the argument for it being safer is that it's small. It's this big enough to kill you very quickly.

Something to keep in mind since 1951 only 4 people have died in the production of nuclear power.

So if precautions are taken it can be very safe.

 

Well ya. Its when the precautions slip that problems occur. The problem is I just don't trust 'people' to always follow precautions, and nuclear power can go the most wrong of anything when precautions arent followed. Its definitely a people problem though.

 

Even though the information is scarce, the small amount of power it produces, the claim of no maintenance for decades and that it is intended for space tells me this is just an upgrade on an RTG.

The full name is Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, but also commonly called "Atomic Batteries". And no, if that is the case there is absolutely no chance of it "melting down". The odds of that are absolutely zero, zilch, nothing. That is because they do not generate power with nuclear fission, but use the heat generated by radioactive decay to provide the power. It is a subcritical mass of uranium or plutonium, that requires no moving parts and absolutely no fission happens inside of it.



If this is the case, it is not a "uranium steam engine". In fact, I am betting this is also the case as they say in multiple reports that it will have a lifespan of around 60 years with no maintenance. Which is damned close to the 87 year half-life of Pu238.

Here is a rather simple explanation on how these actually work.

 

~ Elon Musk is already working on the 'New-Q-Lar' Muskmobile !

 

And it will be available next year! And self-driving.

 

When precautions slip redundant protocol is activated. And this doesn't typically lead to meltdown. So you're fears are unreasonable.

 

Delete

 

Well thats good ...from a standpoint of safety. Maybe not so good from a standpoint of ROI. Depending on how resource intensive they are to create of course.

 

'Typically' isn't really good enough, given the damage potential of meltdown.

 

Do you have electricity in your home? I'm going to make the assumption that whether you rent a home an apartment studio or whatever you probably have electricity.

You count on the people that produced and wired up all of the different electrical components in your house I bet you're brave enough to plug things in.

So you're willing to trust your life in a whole list of different people's hands when it comes to not being electrocuted.

How much of your time do you spend thinking about being struck by lightning? Do you just walk around outside do you know how many people get struck by lightning?

The number dwarfs people who have been killed and meltdowns in the US.

You have a dryer in your house like a clothes dryer or do you have one in your apartment building or does anyone around you have one? Do you know how many people you have to trust to believe that thing won't burn your house down?

I think you're just spooked by nuclear power it's fair radiation is a devious killer you'll be dead before you even know you were exposed. But every day you walk about in the world not worried about being struck by lightning or having your house burnt out by your dryer or getting in your car and driving it somewhere and you're trusting way more people that have a way higher failure rate and everything else you do.

 

These are only used for very specific purposes. Generally for remote unmanned stations that do not need a lot of power. Space probes, lighthouses, and ocean buoys are the most common uses. And if you notice, the main proposed purpose for these is future space missions,

In situations like all of those, ROI is completely not applicable at all. There actually is no "ROI", as they are not expected to ever make any kind of money at all, but for research and exploration.

 

LOL my house was built in 1942. It still has wiring that is insulated with wax paper. Some wasps built a HUGE nest in the crawlspace and ate the wax paper off, so I had several feet of exposed copper wiring running along one of the joists for who-knows-how-long before I found it (in the winter, thank God, the wasps were all dead) while fixing something else. It was just pure dumb luck that the wires maintained their original shape after the paper was eaten off and they didn't touch eachother before I was able to replace that section with modern house wiring.

I don't trust ANYTHING. I prepare for things to fail.

And no, nuclear contamination is FAR more likely to kill you slowly. The 4 deaths you mentioned were attributed to radiation because those were the 4 people that died quickly after extreme exposure. Radiation is far more likely to just increase symptoms that cause you to die earlier (like cancer) than it is to kill you immediately.

If a nuclear power plant leaked radiation and caused 1 million people to all die 10 years earlier than they would have otherwise, but not til way after the leak occurred, would you say the radiation killed them, or no?

 

Nukes are great for centralizing power and keeping the populace dependent upon an very small group of specialists. We should also keep in mind how they serve enemies so well with tempting targets.

 

Well thats currently true. But suppose you and 100 other people could together just BUY a micro-reactor for your community and have your own local, independent grid? If this thing in OP pans out, that could become reality.

 

I didn't say those four deaths was from radiation.

Are you worried about it reactor poisoning you don't lick it and you won't have to worry about it you know how close you have to be?

Which reactor?

 

Any of them. Ionizing radiation degrades the ends of the telomeres of your DNA. So does replication. You have a lifespan that ~= however resistant your DNA is to eroding telomeres during replication. If you didn't know, every cell in your body replicates, dies and is replaced by new cells. Every time your cells do this, they suffer a little bit from the 'copy of a copy' syndrome, which manifests as degraded telomeres (we call it 'getting old'). Ionizing radiation also degrades telomeres. So essentially, ionizing radiation makes you age faster (its a little more complicated than that, but that is the effective result).

So I'll ask again. If some random nuclear power point leaks enough ionizing radiation (usually as gaseous or micro-solid particulates that you may have heard referred to as 'hot particles') that happens to decrease the lifespan of a million people by an average of 10 years, did it 'kill them', or no?

 

Thorium???

 

A large potential for FAFO.

Nuclear might be just the wave of human future but we need to get the bugs worked out first

 

Their website says uranium.

I recall that thorium, while safer, is not efficient. I could be wrong...

 

Seems Westinghouse is also looking into this
https://www.westinghousenuclear.com/energy-systems/evinci-microreactor
Australia might have to reopen Mary Kathleen

 

Oh yeah, you guys have quite a bit of uranium. And quite a bit of wasteland that would great for isolating nuke plants from populated areas.

Get on that!

 

List some of the casualties.

I took industrial radiography and also radiation safety.

I don't play what if scenarios. List a particular power plant and some casualties please.

 

Thats the problem. How do you count casualties for something that kills decades later and with a wide variety of common symptoms?

 

Start with one. If there is a casual link that should be easy.