Hyperion?

[drmike]

Metal hydrides are interesting beasts. If that is the basic idea, I think the refueling will be challenging.

It's fine for a 10 year battery (or even 50 if you don't suck that much power out), and they show it buried under ground, so it can stay there forever - but when the energy runs out you have a radioactive cask you can't touch for 1000 years. I think it will be a tough sell.

But thanks for the pointers, I didn't see any of that on their web site!

[kurt9]

I contacted the Hyperion guys earlier this year to see if I can sell for them in East Asia. They told me that they expected to have a prototype available around 2012-2013. I think Hyperion may be "vaporware".

[StevePoling]

According to this article, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... los-alamos the Hyperion is "based on a 50-year-old design that has proved safe for students to use"

I think there's some confusion about liquid metal. You can use liquid sodium as a working fluid to extract heat from the core. But if you do, there are some real engineering problems to solve, given the chemical properties of sodium. I think this has been demonstrated to be a Bad Idea. (Again, don't take my word on this, consult a trained nuclear engineer.)

However, thorium, uranium and plutonium are all metals. It is a very very bad bad thing in a traditional light water reactor if the fuel rods ever melt. (Just ask Jane Fonda.) But I believe the Hyperion design expects the fuel to be maintained in a liquid state at a self-regulating temperature safe for the hot tub. I don't know how heat is extracted from this nuclear hot tub, but I rather doubt this design specifies liquid sodium in the primary loop.

[jmc]

I've heard of this idea before in new scientist.

I wonder whether from a safety culture point of view, its good practice to treat nuclear reactors as a black box that will never go wrong that you can just walk away from and leave without worrying about.

What if there is some kind of accident or realease of radioactivity and there are no engineers nearby with the necessary skills to repair it?

[olivier]

You can use liquid sodium as a working fluid to extract heat from the core. [...] I think this has been demonstrated to be a Bad Idea.

Anyone is free to call it an evil idea (that's ideology) but bad would be unfair.
As an example the Superphenix fast breeder prototype was connected to the French grid from 1986 to 1997 years, during which it experienced 4 1/2 years of normal operation, 2 years of outage due to technical problems, 6 1/2 of outage waiting for political decisions. It did experience many technical problems and cost overruns, but that is what is expected from a prototype, at least to some extent.
The shutdown decision was a political concession to the green party in exchange for their entry in the government. If was influenced by the recent history of the Chernobyl disaster, as well as the miserable communication and lack of transparency which were nuclear industry's trademarks at that time. When it was stopped, the official report ironically stated that it would be profitable and able to produce 8 TWh per year.

[MSimon]

drmike,

External radioactivity after shutdown should be no worse than a conventional nuke. i.e. within 10 days or so of shutdown workers should be able to spend 1/4 hr near the reactor. After 100 days the limit might be in the range of hours.

Of course there is the whole cycle to consider: safe transport to the reprocessing plant.

[Skipjack]

Gee, I was sure hoping that the thing would be sealed so no radiactivity can come out and that the whole thing including shielding gets transported to the refueling plant.

[rj40]

Even if it works as advertised, I am not sure how useful it would be. For example, much of Africa could really benefit from this technology, but there seems to be so little good governance in that part of the world. I’d bet every terrorist around would be working to dig them up. Where would this work; stable countries that have come to grips with fission power – France for example? And by the way, where does France store its spent fuel? It isn’t Yucca Mountain in the American west, so where? Is that site generally considered safe for thousands of years?

But it probably doesn’t matter, "vaporware" sounds about right to me. Ever hear of the Moller Sky car?

[TallDave]

I doubt their cost estimates hold up.

Still, I'll cheer if they ever actually turn one on.

EDIT:

The claim of "no moving parts" is kinda misleading b/c they acknowledge it needs to be hooked to a steam turbine

Aaaaand there goes the commercial feasibility. I suspect ten little steam turbines cost considerably more than one big one with 10x the output.

This may work for small outposts of civilization in very sparsely populated areas, but I doubt they ever show up in suburbia.

[Nanos]

The Moller vehicle is taking its time in development I grant you that, but at least we have seen prototypes hovering about in the air

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 6526971165

[olivier]

where does France store its spent fuel?

The main difference with what is done in the US is that the fuel is reprocessed, separating Uranium (stored in a liquid form for later reuse), Plutonium (partly reused in MOX fuel and stored for later reuse in fast reactors), fission products (vitrified and temporarily stored as glass containers - 100 m3/yr - in pits in the reprocessing facility).
By law, three options for long term storage are being assessed before a final decision is made not before 2015 : transmutation, surface/subsurface storage, deep geological storage (this would be in a site in the East of the country, 500 m underground in a jurassic mudstone layer).

Ever hear of the Moller Sky car?

Never. And thank you rj40 and Nanos, I had not seen such a beautiful design since Flash Gordon's. I need one immediately.

[olivier]

I got the link to the Hyperion patent, and that one too, from the NextBigFuture blog. I had never heard of it before, has anyone?

[MSimon]

I got the link to the Hyperion patent, and that one too, from the NextBigFuture blog. I had never heard of it before, has anyone?

Yes. They have done a number of articles on Bussard Fusion. I get a link from them occasionally.

[drmike]

I have no problem with reprocessing, especially metal fuel. But they show the placement of the typical installation underground and sealed, so it seems like it is supposed to just stay there. Maybe that's a detail they just haven't worked out yet.

If the whole thing is built as a shipping container then maybe you can dig it up and move it as a safe chunk, then open it at a reprocessing facility. That's kind of why I like the Argonne fast metal reactor though - the plant has a reprocessing facility built in so all you have to do is throw in fuel every 5 years and maintain the structure for 100 years. Comparing the cost of moving the small devices to building a reprocessing plant at every power plant would be interesting.

[StevePoling]

You may have heard that Toshiba is giving away a small nuke to a village in Alaska. I think that north of the border is the ideal market for Hyperion (or nuclear in general). There's a real need for rural electrification throughout Alaska, the Yukon, and Northwest Territories.

The politics in the region is rock-solid stable. Canadians just get snippy when Middle Eastern types start burning down the town. And if the political insurgents of that region are like Sarah Palin...

And just south of there is Alberta and its tar sands. Conventional oil production from tar sands involves burning massive quantities of Natural Gas to separate the bitumen from the sand. People who worry about carbon footprints don't think that's a good idea. Of course, people who worry about carbon footprints range from NIMBYs to BANANAs. This technology promises 50% burn rates of fissionables resulting in much lower nuclear waste production.