Toshiba makes a personal Nuclear Reactor. Available in the US 2009 | Hacker News Reader

Toshiba makes a personal Nuclear Reactor. Available in the US 2009

nextenergynews.com

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Maybe its premature optimization, but: what happens when the fuel is consumed? All the reactor must be dumped or it is enough with the fuel?

I hope the owners never have to call the helpdesk!

The DOE has a similar project on a larger scale. Typically in these designs the fuel comes with the reactor, along with everything else: it is a sealed device. Once the fuel is spent, the reactor is shipped back to a plant, the waste disposed, and the case recycled and refueled.

Apparently Toshiba is planning to pilot this (or something of the kind) in Galena, Alaska:

http://www.adn.com/front/story/4214182p-4226215c.html

http://www.kiyu.com/news1007_2.htm

Is this a joke? Would you really feel comfortable with a nuclear reactor in your basement?

"Please tell me this doesn't run on gas! Gas explodes, you know?"

Yes, given a history of testing. I don't want to be the guinea pig, but the simple fact that it's nukuler isn't an issue.

Here's the real issue:

How many people are employed by power companies and their related organizations? Thousands? Hundreds of Thousands? Millions? My guess is millions at least.

When all those people lose their jobs because everyone has their own power plant in their basement, it's going to make the depression look like a bull market!

This is the true cost of our way of life that most environmentalists have trouble admitting. The scale of change required would be revolutionary. It will hurt.

But then you will need people to setup the new reactor, you will need salesmen, you will need technicians to run revisions. Probably not all places will be safer enough to hold a nuclear reactor, so probably the traditional grid will be still necessary... Think of it like a distributed power plant with a grid which still needs maintenance.

Don't forget the hackers and painters.

Of course, but for a certain period, those will be different people. That's massive change. People don't like change generally.

I'm not saying it shouldn't happen, or that it won't. All I'm saying is that the type of disaffection these types of changes create usually creates a short period of misery while the power (no pun there) is shifted to the new order.

Every technological change of this magnitude has resulted in political fallout. To suggest otherwise is hopelessly naive.

Not everyone is able to see this as opportunity - most will see it as a threat to the status quo they enjoy.

Please tell me that you are joking.

Joking about what?

$3000 says that regulatory hurdles are put up all over the place by governments before the first one gets installed. That will happen mainly for the same reason there are tons of regulatory hurdles in place for Hydrogen powered cars. There is a lot of power that will need to be shifted before this becomes a reality.

You can barely drive a segway on the sidewalk, you think you're going to be allowed to install a nuclear reactor in your basement?

Joking about the depression coming about because of a new technological invention.

Hmm, that wasn't my intent, but I can see how you read that.

I was looking at the depression from a social pov rather than economic, which made sense in my head at least.

Basically, the point is the kind of massive shift in power required here would need something many times more society altering than a depression to achieve anything meaningful.

You mean, just like all those Gatorade employees in the movie Idiocracy? :-)

lol, yeah, kind of like that I guess.

But, its got what plants need !

(Brawno I think they called it).

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