h a l f b a k e r yIt's not a thing. It will be a thing.
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Instead of the giant power plants that output giant
amounts of energy, why not make a large super-safe
self
enclosed tiny radioactive powered cell giving at most
3
kw per home. Made of lead encased in concrete,
holding some highly radioactive element, and a radio-
electric receptor, similar
to a PV (photo-voltaic) cell,
or
maybe even a PV cell, installed in the basement or
even
in the garden, it would produce enough energy for the
home for quite a time.
By the time its finished, somebody on the halfbakery
will have invented a way to get rid of radioactive
toxic
waste in a way that wouldn't cost that much (sending
it
in a rocket to the sun, only to discover that it hit the
sun's crust and caused an eruption that wipes us out.
Or, by the time its finished, there will be no people
left
anyways because of a combined tsunami, earthquake
nucular explosion, terror attack, an epidemic and bad
humor by the Sarah Silverman show.
4S Micro Reactor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_4S
Baked [PainOCommonSense, Nov 01 2012]
Taylor Wilson.
http://www.ted.com/...fusion_reactor.html
[2 fries shy of a happy meal, Nov 02 2012]
The story about the bottomless pit
http://shinichihosh...ionpictures/nhk.php
Can't find the text, but I'm quite sure it was this guys short shorts. [pashute, Nov 02 2012]
Snap 10-A
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNAP-10A
went into orbit in the 60s. Broke apart in the 70s. [fishboner, Nov 02 2012]
Is this guy legit?
http://www.newscien...to-electricity.html
[pashute, Nov 03 2012]
[link]
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David Hahn tried to do this. Didn't work out so well. |
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I've thought about this before. The biggest problem is that you will have radioactive elements in large quantities all over the place. That's a huge risk for terrorism, dirty bombs, ecological disasters, etc. To generate enough power for one house takes a shocking amount of highly radioactive material. Also your idea is leaving out some critical details like how we're going to capture this nuclear energy. There are no PV cells for gamma radiation. RTGs that use heat are widely known to exist as well as actual nuclear powered photovoltaics. This doesn't really add anything new besides "in your house". |
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/nucular/
xandram, while in office G Bush revised several english words and this is one. My favorite is "strategery" which might have actually been Will Farrell channeling GB. |
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// sending it in a rocket to the sun // |
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Possibly the most proposed and most expensive option.
Better, methinks, to tunnel down and sink it into the
Earth's mantle, where it will melt away and not cause any
appreciable difficulties for several generations at the
earliest. |
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Only to discover that we disturbed one of the most
important sources of life in the natural habitat and
eco-cycles sustaining life on earth. |
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I once read a great story starting with a kid finding a
hole somewhere in the ground and yelling: Hey! Is
there anybody down there! Then dropping some
pebbles and hearing nothing. As time progresses
people try to measure the bottom or reach it but
never can, including scientists. It is finally used as a
toxic waste dump, until one day, someone walking on
the street hears "Hey! Is there anybody down there!
followed by pebbles falling nearby. |
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The tech for small radioisotope-powered electric
generators, in the form of ultra-reliable, no-
moving-parts radio thermal generators (RTGs) has
been pretty well-baked for more than half a
century, used for applications as varied as
powering remote military bases and spacecraft. |
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The main technical problem with this idea as
presented is in its assumption that an “enclosed
tiny radioactive powered cell giving at most 3 kw”
– which I’ll assume also means at giving at least 2
kW – is possible. The usual RTG produces about
500 W/kg plutonium, so a 2 kW on would need a
non-tiny 4 kg of Pu-238. If your requirement is
that it keep generating 2+ kW for 30 years, given
Pu-238’s 87.7 year half-life, you’d need a bit over
2.5 kg of it. |
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Allowing that you’ve got to have enough fissile
material, there’s nothing very difficult about
powering a single home with an RTG, technically.
Socially, you’ve got to trust its owner not to
misuse or let get stolen and misused their big
chunk of deady poison, which is why in the 50+
years they been around, RTGs have only been used
by well-guarded (at least in principle – it’s said
Russia can’t account for several hundred of the
roughtly 1,000 they built) government facilities
and innately burglar-proof spaceships. [-] |
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Why do people want to launch radioactives into the sun? It's not a particularly great way to get rid of them. |
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If you're going to launch them, simply stack them out of the way on the moon. It's tectonically stable, with, at most, relatively minor quakes. There is no ground water or atmosphere to contaminate. There is no local population at risk, and even if we colonize the moon, it's not that hard to avoid a known dangerous area. |
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And we'd still have access to them once we realize it makes far more sense to run spent fuel through breeder reactors than to dispose of it. |
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^You obviously never watched "Space:1999". |
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Personally I think neighbourhood-sized nukular (<-- correct spelling) power plants are a great idea: you could get the benefit of CHP as well. The only question is will it scale well, efficiency-wise. |
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//Why do people want to launch radioactives into
the sun? It's not a particularly great way to get rid
of them. If you're going to launch them, simply
stack them out of the way on the moon.//
An objection to this idea as silly as the idea itself
inspired the mostly-now-forgotten but 1970s SF TV
series “Space: 1999”. |
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Seriously, IMHO the nuclear waste disposal
problem is mostly due to irrational political factors.
There’s pretty compelling evidence that sealing
and dumping the stuff in undersea subduction
trenches will get practically any stuff you really
don’t want coming back to haunt you out of the
way in the short term, and in a few million years,
completely beneath the Earth’s crust, but that
this approach is an international legal no-starter.
Nuclear waste is dangerous primarily because
governments are willing to make it, but unwilling
to accept the best proposals for getting rid of it. |
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Until launching stuff into space gets many times
cheaper and dramatically more environmentally
friendly than present, I can’t imagine lunching the
tens of thousands of tons of the stuff produced
every year – which would take tens of launches of
the largest boosters now existing each day – into
space being feasible. |
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2.5Kg of Pu238 costs about $13,000,000.00 It's great stuff, but even if I could get the proper permits I couldn't afford enough to power a wristwatch. Solar power is more viable for houses. |
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I thought it was spelt “Nucyular” |
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Isn't 'output' as a verb even worse? Why not 'power plants that put out giant amounts of energy'? Didn't someone take-home nuclear materials from work to build a small reactor at home? Is that just an urban legend? |
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//Didn't someone take-home nuclear materials//
You mean "hometake", shirley? |
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//2.5Kg of Pu238 costs about $13,000,000.00...I
couldn't afford enough to power a wristwatch.// |
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5mg of Pu238 would be more than sufficiently
adequate to power a quartz analogue watch, at a
cost of $65. |
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[MB] You would think so, but RTGs are so inefficient that 5mg would never produce enough voltage. You would probably need a few grams. |
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Yeah, nuclear energy doesn't scale down that well. The smallest RTGs seem to use a few hundred grams of fuel, and are very inefficient (Wikipedia). As for the Toshiba 4S, "This power plant is designed to provide 10 megawatts of electrical power with a 50 MW version available in the future." |
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// Didn't someone take-home nuclear materials from work
to build a small reactor at home? Is that just an urban
legend? // |
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Yes and no. Wiki 'David Hahn'. There's also another kid
whose name I can't remember who built all of the non-
restricted parts of a functional mini-reactor when he was
in his early teens and then applied to the Department of
Energy for permits to own the fuel elements. Now he's
raking in seven figures as a nuclear physics consultant. |
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It is worth noting that David Hahn's reactor probably would have worked, and any of us could go build one right now. The only "hard to find" element was lots of Thorium from lantern mantles (which no longer use Th) but I'm sure there are other sources around. It's pretty amazing that you can start a nuclear chain reaction in your shed with some lantern mantles, smoke detectors, a bit of lead, and tin foil. |
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Nonetheless, I'm thinking of getting a bunch of tritium lights, just so I can annoy my hippie friends by saying "Guess what? I've got nuclear power!". |
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A nuclear powered keychain is by far my best keychain-related purchase. Go for it. |
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I gots nukuler-powered sights on my deer rifle! |
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//here's also another kid whose name I can't remember who built all of the non- restricted parts of a functional mini-reactor when he was in his early teens // |
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I'm sure Taylor Wilson a genius, but building a safe-and-WKTE "Farnsworth Fusor" isn't exactly the same as making fissile Uranium with a neutron gun that you made yourself. |
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So if so many people enjoyed this line of thought,
why do I get a bone and no pastry? Not fair!! |
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[CraigD] says its doable and others showed it has
been baked, only that the price is very high. That's
because of regulations and security. But if a gps
reporting system could be enclosed inside as well,
then it would make it very hard to steal, and prices
would go down rapidly. And once its legal, with a UN
enforcing unit, countries like Uzbekistan can
prosper, Fukushima type danger would go away, and
the Arab countries would be free to make a better
life for the poor 98% of their population, rather than
thinking about how to cover their cars and personal
planes with pure silver. |
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//The main technical problem with this idea as presented is in its assumption that an “enclosed tiny radioactive powered cell giving at most 3 kw” – which I’ll assume also means at giving at least 2 kW – is possible.// - [CraigD] |
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If you read that carefully, he's not saying that it's doable. |
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The problems go beyond mere expense. Existing designs are either much too powerful, or much too inefficient, for domestic use. It's an idea that has been thoroughly worked on, and shown to be problematic. Hence the negativity. |
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Carefully read:
//... 2.5 kg ...
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Also carefully read:
//Allowing that you’ve got to have enough fissile
material, there’s nothing very difficult about
powering a single home with an RTG, technically.
Socially, you’ve got to trust its owner not to misuse
... |
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Despite the bone given by CraigD, I don't see the real
problem. What's the size needed for a device like
this? Two square meters or even four? |
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Which episode? (Or what was the theme during that
episode, so I can find it?) And your correct, I have not
seen it before. Its a lot of fun looking at these old,
super slow developing, TV shows with stupid music
making it "futuristic". |
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Just a question: Why has fassion not adopted clothes
that look like the ones on these shows? |
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One link shows a kid saying he made a nuclear reaction
that does not produce power. Nothing to do with my
idea. The other link shows the smallest possible fission
reactor power plant. Again, NOT what i'm proposing. |
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I wasn't asking about the Toshiba 10 megawatt thing.
I'm asking about the area needed for a radioactive-to-
power contraption with no thermal recovery and of
course no nuclear reaction, only a stacked pack of
proper PV cells with radioactive material stuffed in
between, covered by a protective led cover and
enclosed in concrete, emitting 10 Kw. |
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But, "proper PV cells" that absorb Gamma or x-ray do not
exits. The things that do exist are baked, WKTE, and not
used in peoples' houses for a reason. |
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[+] although partially baked. |
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and strongly recommend that Craig D does not lunch on
radioactive material (apart from Brazil nuts and bananas) |
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The key benefit for these micro Reactors was the
reduction in lost energy from heating long distance pylon
wires. |
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Thanks fishboner. So even a tiny (and the Spat is tiny)
reactor can be made! |
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should make them into boxcars. |
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Rail is pervasive; using it they can be shipped back and forth for maintenance, when necessary. |
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or extended from the roof with a vacuum balloon. |
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so, its a good thing that Romney did not get into
power. |
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