Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Finally small nuke reactors are on their way!

Not so sure tbear, it's a nightmare getting transmission lines approved much less built. Otter Tail II (coal fired, second plant in the same location) is pretty much good to build except Minnesota is holding up approval of transmission facilities needed to get the electrons to market. Environmentalists, don't ya know, pushing wind (in more ways than one). The planned transmission lines were designed with extra capacity for wind generation but they want it all. They're basing their case on CO2 "pollution" and getting more than a little traction.

The time of the large centralized nuke plant has passed. The US plants are dinosaurs and even the newer generation European plants will not be replaced with similar facilities when they are decommissioned.

The package-type nuke plants are either Liquid-Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTR - "lifter") or Pebble Bed Reactors. The US is largely pursuing the former and the Euros the latter. LFTR plants are more efficient and more complicated than PBRs. Both types are very safe and produce a lot of power for the dollar.

I don't like conventional nuclear power for lots of reasons, but LFTR and PBR technology is tremendously promising.

I was more worried that some one would dig down breach what ever containment the unit has and scatter the radioactive material with an explosive or fire causing a very messy and expensive situation.

Pete,

Store it in Brighton...If it leeks, it would just make bizaare folks even more bizarre...

Nothing is impossible, but that would be very time-consuming, such that help would have a lot of time to respond. And even if they succeeded, they've managed to set off a "dirty bomb" out in the boonies, bad if you live close, but not quite a statement like setting one off in Times Square, so my guess is it's not that attractive target.

Your scenario involving a conventional Light Water Reactor (LWR) is a huge problem. If a breach occurs in a LWR, superheated radioactive cooling water is released to the atmosphere as steam.

The operating theory of the new generation Pebble Bed Reactor (PBR) largely defuses that scenario. A PBR is gas-cooled with helium. Helium is much more inert than water so even a direct release of the gas contacting the core is a minor event. The reaction in the core itself is based on the proximity of the pebbles to one another, a pile of them together is what starts and sustains the reaction, so if the pebbles are scattered the reaction stops.