Hyperion?

[rj40]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... los-alamos

[rj40]

This sounds a bit fishy to me. Perhaps a joke. Found the link at the top of Drudge.

[classicpenny]

This sounds a bit fishy to me. Perhaps a joke. Found the link at the top of Drudge.

If so, the scam is pretty elaborate:

http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/index.html

Bill Flint

[csgt428]

http://www.lcni5.com/cgi-bin/storyviewa ... chive+News
Here is a link to a Los Alamos Monitor article about it.

[joedead]

Wow.

Is this legit? If so, I'm honestly pretty dumbfounded.




Mr. Fission?

[csgt428]

http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/nex ... 2.17b.html
Looks like Toshiba is in on the action as well...

[KitemanSA]

Several companies have proposed small, sealed "nuclear battery" type reactors for some time, so a 27MW electrical is reasonable. It is the "no moving parts" that intrigues me. Do you suppose this is truly a scaled up thermionic battery vice a nuclear core / heat engine of some sort?

[Skipjack]

Maybe technology like this helped making a nuclear battery type of reactor more feasable:
http://technology.newscientist.com/arti ... icity.html

In any case this is very interesting. Still totally impossible to get that put anywhere where I live. People are just to brainwashed here.

[rj40]

This isn't exactly burning up the news. I am not hearing NIMBY's going crazy over this either. Sadly, it will probably amount to nothing.

[drmike]

Here is the source "Hyperion web site"

My vote is scam. There is absolutely no information on what kind of nuclear power it is - radioactive decay or fission from neutrons. You'd think they'd be bragging about something!

But if they can get people to accept nuclear power sources, that's a plus.

[StevePoling]

(My daughter is the nuclear engineer, not me. Don't take my word on this. Google "Hyperion" if this sounds hinky.)

The idea is to set up a shielded hot-tub full of metal-hydride. And make the metal a fissionable material like uranium or thorium. This is a mix of moderator and fission fuel. If it fizzes to fast, it gets too hot and the hydrogen disassociates removing the moderator thereby quenching the reaction. As it cools, the hydrogen chemically recombines with the metal so it can moderate new fission reactions. Process continues until some significant proportion of the fissionables are burnt. Very little nuclear waste b/c you're burning more fuel than in a conventional power plant.

The design is touted as being walk-away safe. And it is supposed to be the cat's meow when you want to extract crude from tar sands or oil shale. Do a search on http://nextbigfuture.com/ of "Hyperion."

[Nanos]

A little more information about the Toshiba effort:

http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory: ... on_Reactor

http://www.primidi.com/2005/02/06.html

http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/2008 ... actor.html

[olivier]

There is absolutely no information on what kind of nuclear power it is - radioactive decay or fission from neutrons

No useful information on their website indeed, but you can get some from their pending patent, also available there. I gave it a cursory reading.
It is a nuclear fission reactor which is supposed to be self-moderated by the uranium hydride (UH3) and self-regulated, as an increase in temperature would dissociate the hydride and make it sub-critical.
It would require 5% enriched uranium as fuel, which is very similar to what is used in today's PWRs and is not very satisfactory in terms of natural resource usage (Pu or Th are considered as a variant).
The coolant would be either liquid metal, which allegedly would not require any mechanical pump, or actively pumped nonhydrogenous fluid. This is very vague but maybe they wanted to keep the doors as open as possible in their patent.
A 50% fuel burnup is claimed, which would be a dramatic improvement over PWRs. Reprocessing could be achieved by simple zone refining which is interesting but a bit in contradiction with the ideal of a sealed, non proliferant reactor.
The capital cost is as low as $1m per MW which is very attractive, but I will remain skeptical until I know where I can buy one from.

Uranium hydride was used in the 50s by Ed Teller in an alternative attempt to build atomic bombs. It turned out to be a failure, mocked by Enrico Fermi. BTW Hyperion's reactor bears some similarities with another concept by Teller, the already mentioned TWV, in that is self-regulated and underground. On the other hand, it differs from the TWR in that it is much smaller, relies on different regulation principles and requires enriched fuel and periodic refueling.

The idea of making a source of energy out of a damp squib is appealing. Yet many question marks remain. And public acceptance is an issue.

[Solo]

Hmm, yeah, the fact that they didn't have much technical info on the website was throwing me, but the self-moderation by dissociation actually makes some sense. The claim of "no moving parts" is kinda misleading b/c they acknowledge it needs to be hooked to a steam turbine, which is plenty of moving parts. But I guess its legit.

[Skipjack]

That is not good... If it has to be hooked to a steamturbine then there are lots of issues again with that. E.g (though only weakly) radioactive secondary coolant outside the sealed chamber. Besides it will need openings for the tubing of the coolant to go through. This is quite disappointing. I was hoping for something more revolutionary. This is not really much different from a reactor in an Alfa class submarine (small, with liquid metal cooling). These had plenty of issues btw. The problem with liquid metal cooling is that it can cause the primary cooling circle to fail if the reactor ever gets cold for some reason (the metal stops being a liquid).