Mini nuclear plants

I saw this on Drudge and it looks very interesting.

Nuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000 homes will be on sale within five years, say scientists at Los Alamos, the US government laboratory which developed the first atomic bomb.

Link to full story
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/nov/09/miniature-nuclear-reactors-los-alamos

& you just know that 10 years after they are in your home, everyone in your neighborhood will be dying of cancer!!

(the government EXPERTS will be issuing apologies & the lawyers will be making BILLIONS in law suits!)

No thanks....I'll stick with coal!

It doesn't go in your home. It gets buried underground adjacent to a community. Sounds promising. This is the kind of thing we need to lessen our dependence on foreign oil. More please!

Now that is interesting. They claim the cost to produce a kilowatt (kilowatt hour?) would be 10 cents. Assuming that is for each subscriber that doubles what I pay now. Therefore the only advantage to me is to reduce dependency on foreign oil which in itself is great, I suppose.

This new technology I guess would pretty much kill the coal industry in as much as the now coal powered electric power generating facilities would no longer be needed. But then there would be more coal available to the public which should drive down the price per ton. But on the other hand once governments solve the problem of using the now used natural resources for energy production will coal or any other natural resource now in use be banned from personal use?

chemung wrote:Assuming that is for each subscriber that doubles what I pay now

Not for long..... rates in PA are expected to jump 30% to 60% in a few years.

Wow, you've got very low electric rates. Our's range from 9.5 cents to 13 cents between peak and off peak. Look for yours to go up soon.

coalkirk wrote:Wow, you've got very low electric rates. Our's range from 9.5 cents to 13 cents between peak and off peak. Look for yours to go up soon.

It recently did go up. But I'm sure it's going to go much higher. We are at 5.5 cent a kwh now.

Richard S. wrote:

chemung wrote:Assuming that is for each subscriber that doubles what I pay now

Not for long..... rates in PA are expected to jump 30% to 60% in a few years.

Ya I know Richard. I've been watching the PA TV hearings. The state is deregulating. When that happens I figure I can go to the Army Navy store and buy one of them WW2 coffee grinders.

http://www.triplepundit.com/pages/clean ... s-japa.php

Japan of course has a better idea.Dave

Good grief! $.10 a KWH is about half price for us in Maine!! $.18 right now & going up 5% within a few months.

I wonder if that $.10 is whole sale or retail? Wholesale power goes for about $.03 right now. If it went to $.10 it would be very expensive.

What's really needed is a way to use the spent nuclear power plant fuel rods. These rods are currently stored at power plants because the federal government is not come up with a workable long term storage site. The rods are still "hot" but not hot enough for a power plant. I would think they would make good "fuel" for a district heating system. Just pipe hot water, that's been heated with the decaying fuel rods, to homes. Obviously there needs to be a heat exchanger and proper engineering for a fail safe system.

I pay 5.92 cents per kwh

http://www3.pplweb.com/choice/literatur ... ompare.pdf

Mini Nukes sure does sound like a reasonable way to go. No huge outlay ,no huge giant oversized reactor capable of melting everything within a few miles.
Scaled down designs that could be controled much easier and would cost a lot less and be up and running a lot faster.....But I am afriad the current climate in Washington will be such that the green sqweaky wheels will drown out any sensible nuclear projects or any serious talks about them.
I just cant help thinking that every time the democrats get in power its the nutty side of the party that ends up calling the shots as payment for putting an administration in power.
Now that Democrats have almost total control of Congress they better stop crying and get some real work done and if they dont in 4 years a Republican named Elmer Fudd will be able roust them out of washington. Time will tell,it will be interesting.
Meanwhile keep paying your money to the nice folks in Mid East that sponsor the folks who want to bury us with our own money

TimV wrote:I just cant help thinking that every time the democrats get in power its the nutty side of the party that ends up calling the shots as payment for putting an administration in power.
Now that Democrats have almost total control of Congress they better stop crying and get some real work done and if they dont in 4 years a Republican named Elmer Fudd will be able roust them out of washington. Time will tell,it will be interesting.
Meanwhile keep paying your money to the nice folks in Mid East that sponsor the folks who want to bury us with our own money

One bright note is Obama isn't really beholding to nutty side of the party for getting him elected. He just ran a good campaign. What I'm unclear on is what exactly Obamas energy policy is? We know he's against coal, he's not in favor of nukes. Can someone who is more familiar with O enlighten me? I'm all for renewables but wind and solar don't have the ability to meet our energy demands even in the long run. Short of some technological breakthrough, I just don't see what his plan is unless it's rolling blackouts. We need to start building nuke plants now. These mini nukes alone arn't an answer but they can certainly be a player.

I hope their safety department is better than they're math department. They say $25 million between 10,000 homes is $250 each. Ahhhhh, try ten times that. Maybe that $250 is suppose to be the monthly payment if you had electric heat. Oops! We're sorry! Your monthly payment is actually $2,500.