EJ's Pocket size reactor makes the news

[Mega]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...ors-los-alamos

If this is the case then why not use it to power large ships, say oil tankers?
;)
Mike

[Starving Steve]

Re: EJ's Pocket size reactor makes the news

Imagine municipalities like Victoria or Vancouver telling BC Hydro to get lost! --- to take BC Hydro's planned electric rate increases and shove them!

This is too good to be true.... The eco-frauds will kill it, especially here in BC. :rolleyes:

Solar costs 30c per kwh at the new solar-thermal power plant in Bakersfield, California, and atomic power available to everyone from Hyperion is 10c per kwh. So, guess which power source the eco-frauds will choose?:rolleyes:

[seanm123]

Re: EJ's Pocket size reactor makes the news

Imagine municipalities like Victoria or Vancouver telling BC Hydro to get lost! --- to take BC Hydro's planned electric rate increases and shove them!

This is too good to be true.... The eco-frauds will kill it, especially here in BC. :rolleyes:

Solar costs 30c per kwh at the new solar-thermal power plant in Bakersfield, California, and atomic power available to everyone from Hyperion is 10c per kwh. So, guess which power source the eco-frauds will choose?:rolleyes:

First ones should be buried in Greenwich, CT

[Adeptus]

Re: EJ's Pocket size reactor makes the news

This is definitely deflationary, in a good and a bad way.

The Good: I can see one of these or even a mini version of these at every factory around the world. Cost to produce anything is vastly reduced, price reductions get passed onto consumers. Consumers start consuming more, economy recovers! :eek: The middle class in third world countries is vastly increased as consumers there got an instant jolt of buying power. In other words, cheap plastic crap from China, just got a whole lot cheaper.

The Bad: Consuming more and more will only last 5 to 10 years, until we're back at square one: Nobody saved any money, and consumers are all shopped out.

The Worse: When the increased consumption of third world countries, especially BRIC, rises massively, combined with a comeback in consumption by North America & Europe, etc... this will accelerate the polution of our planet at a scale we have not witnessed yet. Cheap plastic crap will cover the oceans (ok slight exageration, but where will all that plastic crap with a 1 to 3 year life cycle end up??)

With near free energy, we'll all live like kings (minus the gold treasure chests), but kill the planet and ourselves that much faster.

And then there's scientists on the boarder of fringe, trying to come up with clean *free* energy, Tesla style...
http://www.aero2012.com/en/orion.html

... while the production of this energy may be free and clean if successful (don't hold your breath - hundreds have tried and failed), the polution of our planet would probably accelerate at crazy speeds, as yet another massive reduction in the price to manufacture anything takes place.

We're so screwed!

Adeptus,

[Starving Steve]

Re: EJ's Pocket size reactor makes the news

Dear Adeptus:

Cheaper electric rates means that I can plug an electric car into my household current and never buy gasoline again.

Cheaper electric rates means that I can heat my log home in East Sooke, BC with electric power instead of wood. And this would mean no more wood smoke throughout the forest. Also, I could put electric lights throughout the house and brighten-up my life, not to mention to heat the house at the same time.

Unfortunately, micro-atomic power units from Hyperion only push electric rates back down to one dime per kwh, but gigantic atomic power plants--- the old-fashioned centralized power authority type that produce over 500megs (>500million-watt-hours)--- can produce power for as low as one cent per kwh.

[we_are_toast]

Re: EJ's Pocket size reactor makes the news

Solar costs 30c per kwh at the new solar-thermal power plant in Bakersfield, California, and atomic power available to everyone from Hyperion is 10c per kwh. So, guess which power source the eco-frauds will choose?:rolleyes:

Solar thermal costs about $.15-$.17 /kwh

Some other advantages over the antiquated nuclear industry:

There will never be a Solar cartel.

You don't have to guard the waste for the next 10,000 years (figure that in your costs!)

When thermal solar leaks, your kids don't get thyroid cancer.

When thermal solar breaks, you don't have to evacuate a radius of 50 miles.

Ask the people who were in Penn. in 1979 and cheyrnobyl in 1986 which they would prefer?

[Wild Style]

Re: EJ's Pocket size reactor makes the news

aren't these the pebble bed nuclear reactors? WIRED magazine did a piece on this a year ago I think. They are testing them in S. Africa now. Also U.S. and China were working hand and hand with some competing Pebble bed reactors to the one S. Africa came up with.

[metalman]

Re: EJ's Pocket size reactor makes the news

aren't these the pebble bed nuclear reactors? WIRED magazine did a piece on this a year ago I think. They are testing them in S. Africa now. Also U.S. and China were working hand and hand with some competing Pebble bed reactors to the one S. Africa came up with.

no, these are something else, i think. pebble bed nukes have moving parts... turbines. no idea how these things work.

before installing one here, there's the small matter of convincing my neighbors that the thing won't blow up.

[tombat1913]

Re: EJ's Pocket size reactor makes the news

aren't these the pebble bed nuclear reactors? WIRED magazine did a piece on this a year ago I think. They are testing them in S. Africa now. Also U.S. and China were working hand and hand with some competing Pebble bed reactors to the one S. Africa came up with.

This is a different concept than pebble bed reactors. The pebble beds are essentially the same as a a conventional water reactor except for the way the fuel is loaded into the reactor. In the pebble bed design the fuel is formed into pebbles just like the name describes, and in the event of a super critical reaction the reactor bottom opens up as a safety mechanism, the pebbles all spread out on the floor and there is no more water as a moderator to continue the neuton cycle and everything starts to cool down again.

I have no idea how this new (no moving parts) design works. Maybe it's similar to the original nuclear pile developed in the manhattan project under the bleachers at University of Chicago football stadium.

[Starving Steve]

Re: EJ's Pocket size reactor makes the news

There is next to no data on the cost of power from solar-thermal in the Kern Desert, so we are held hostage to whatever the eco-frauds (taking government grants) want to say the cost of power is. And sad to say, the eco-frauds have the ear of the governor of California, so there is no stopping them. They can not be held to account for funding, at least not right now.

The last data for solar-thermal was 30cents per kwh, from Mojave, California. This data did NOT account for public grants, nor did it account for water costs, nor electric-transmission costs, nor plant depreciation costs, nor public land costs, nor labour costs, nor just about any other costs....

Meanwhile, viable technologies which can and do provide cheap electric power are squashed thanks to environmental regulation, carbon taxation, and politics. So our electric bills keep climbing because the problem of power production has not been solved at all; it only looks like it has been solved.

Welcome to the West Coast of North America, a land from British Columbia down to Southern California, where nothing gets done, and the eco-nuts rule.

[Wild Style]

Re: EJ's Pocket size reactor makes the news

This is a different concept than pebble bed reactors. The pebble beds are essentially the same as a a conventional water reactor except for the way the fuel is loaded into the reactor. In the pebble bed design the fuel is formed into pebbles just like the name describes, and in the event of a super critical reaction the reactor bottom opens up as a safety mechanism, the pebbles all spread out on the floor and there is no more water as a moderator to continue the neuton cycle and everything starts to cool down again.

I have no idea how this new (no moving parts) design works. Maybe it's similar to the original nuclear pile developed in the manhattan project under the bleachers at University of Chicago football stadium.

Did not know that. Well one thing is for sure, we are in a era of "change" on MANY levels.

[blazespinnaker]

Re: EJ's Pocket size reactor makes the news

These things are pretty interesting.

Not so sure about burying them underground though. Any solution needs to be earthquake proof.

[blazespinnaker]

Re: EJ's Pocket size reactor makes the news

This is definitely deflationary, in a good and a bad way.

The Good: I can see one of these or even a mini version of these at every factory around the world. Cost to produce anything is vastly reduced, price reductions get passed onto consumers. Consumers start consuming more, economy recovers! :eek: The middle class in third world countries is vastly increased as consumers there got an instant jolt of buying power. In other words, cheap plastic crap from China, just got a whole lot cheaper.

The Bad: Consuming more and more will only last 5 to 10 years, until we're back at square one: Nobody saved any money, and consumers are all shopped out.

The Worse: When the increased consumption of third world countries, especially BRIC, rises massively, combined with a comeback in consumption by North America & Europe, etc... this will accelerate the polution of our planet at a scale we have not witnessed yet. Cheap plastic crap will cover the oceans (ok slight exageration, but where will all that plastic crap with a 1 to 3 year life cycle end up??)

With near free energy, we'll all live like kings (minus the gold treasure chests), but kill the planet and ourselves that much faster.

And then there's scientists on the boarder of fringe, trying to come up with clean *free* energy, Tesla style...
http://www.aero2012.com/en/orion.html

... while the production of this energy may be free and clean if successful (don't hold your breath - hundreds have tried and failed), the polution of our planet would probably accelerate at crazy speeds, as yet another massive reduction in the price to manufacture anything takes place.

We're so screwed!

Adeptus,

Yeah, I agree. It would be nice if we could migrate to a consumption free society.

Basically, eliminate income taxes and replace them with consumption based taxes.

Necessities, such as food/shelter/clothing/health/education would be taxed less, or at least, rebates would be given.

So, let's say, a 50% tax on everything (we can work our way up to it

Assume X$ people consume (before the sales tax) per year to survive. They are given a rebate of .5 * X.

I think this is basically what they're doing in Europe. And what they desperately need to be doing in the US and the rest of the world.

A part of this is that all transactions would have to become electronic. Virtual currencies and bartering would probably have to become outlawed.

It would be good in that hopefully we could get rid of income taxes, which are terrible beyond belief (a tax on generating wealth .. wtf).

It would be really bad in that you couldn't spend money without the government getting all up in your face.

[Starving Steve]

Re: EJ's Pocket size reactor makes the news

If we don't bury the pebble-bed micro-nukes underground, they become a target for protests from the eco-frauds. Then the nuts in Greenpeace come by and slip a two-headed-fish or two-headed frog in your duck pond.... Then all hell breaks loose, and the project is stopped by public hysteria.

I watched this happen during the summer when Greenpeace came to protest oil sand development near Fort McMurray. Greenpeace slipped a two headed fish into a pond, and all hell broke loose. Cancers in the human population were then being ascribed to tar sand development.

At sixty years of age, I have lived long enough to have seen all of the tricks that Greenpeace and the other eco-frauds play. They killed nuclear power in the 1970s, and they play upon public hysteria, law-suits, and court-ordered injunctions.

Good advice: Bury the pebble beds regardless of earthquake risk. And don't place aquatic habitat anywhere nearby. Don't allow any visitors to the site, whatsoever. And don't tell anyone what is buried below.

[metalman]

Re: EJ's Pocket size reactor makes the news

If we don't bury the pebble-bed micro-nukes underground, they become a target for protests from the eco-frauds. Then the nuts in Greenpeace come by and slip a two-headed-fish or two-headed frog in your duck pond.... Then all hell breaks loose, and the project is stopped by public hysteria.

I watched this happen during the summer when Greenpeace came to protest oil sand development near Fort McMurray. Greenpeace slipped a two headed fish into a pond, and all hell broke loose.

At sixty years of age, I have lived long enough to have seen all of the tricks that Greenpeace and the other eco-frauds play. They killed nuclear power in the 1970s, and they play upon public hysteria, law suits, and court ordered injunctions.

Good advice: Bury the pebble beds regardless of earthquake risk. And don't place aquatic habitat anywhere nearby.

and bury a few eco-frauds with them.