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Nuke to the Future
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by nukegingrich | November 24, 2007 at 04:26 pm
840 views | 10 Recommendations | 1 comment
The portable nuclear reactor is the size of a hot tub. It’s shaped like a sake cup, filled with a uranium hydride core and surrounded by a hydrogen atmosphere. Encase it in concrete, truck it to a site, bury it underground, hook it up to a steam turbine and, voila, one would generate enough electricity to power a 25,000-home community for at least five years.The company Hyperion Power Generation was formed last month to develop the nuclear fission reactor at Los Alamos National Laboratory and take it into the private sector. If all goes according to plan, Hyperion could have a factory in New Mexico by late 2012, and begin producing 4,000 of these reactors.
Hyperion spokesman Deborah Blackwell commented on several practical applications for the "nuclear battery." “The lab is doing a lot of work on oil shales and oil sands, but there’s no way to get power to those facilities,” Blackwell says. “So, this nuclear battery would be brought in and that would provide the power to run a small city of industrial use.”
Blackwell also envisions that the battery could be used at military bases, as well as in the developing world, where poverty is a product of a lack of electricity and clean drinking water.
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (1)
at 18:17 on November 24th, 2007
Sounds Promising. The obvious questions are, Can this be used for making a bomb and what are the enviromental inpacts? I cannot see this in peoples' backyards but maybe in a government run facility it might be very usefull.