 Dispatches from a rapidly changing, rapidly improving world |
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We’re running BATT’s every day during Thanksgiving week.
The title is perhaps a bit overstated, even in the more modest form that
Esquire
used, but the idea the man is supporting is an excellent one:The miracle solution goes by different names: the sodium fast reactor,
the integral fast reactor, the liquid-metal-cooled reactor. It burns nuclear
waste, emits no CO2, and shuts itself down in an accident. We have enough
fuel to power the whole world for tens of thousands of years. It will end
global warming, and even if global warming is just another paranoid Armageddon
fantasy, it will save us from the dying oceans and starvation and resource
wars that are inevitable as the world’s energy supply dwindles. It will
unleash new industries and revitalize America’s manufacturing industry.Turning nuclear waste into nuclear fuel, eliminating the problem of what
to do with waste, coupled with smart shut-down technology, ensuring that a
melt-down simply can’t occur, allows us to see the nuclear power in a new
light. Actually, it allows us to see nuclear power in the old light, the light
in which it was originally pitched to us: cheap, clean, limitless energy.
It’s exciting that we can now consider a new technology that will help realize
that promise without the dreaded downsides.What is even more exciting is that the sodium fast reactor isn’t
the only option we have for doing that:Hyperion Power Generation Inc. revealed the design for the first version
of the Hyperion Power Module (HPM) that it intends to have licensed and
manufactured at facilities in the United States, Europe, and Asia.The HPM is a safe, self-contained, simple-to-operate nuclear power reactor,
which is small enough to be manufactured en masse and transported in its
entirety via ship, truck, or rail. Euphemistically referred to as a "fission
battery," the HPM will deliver 70 megawatts of thermal energy, or approximately
25 megawatts of electricity. This amount of energy is enough to supply electricity
to 20,000+ average American-style homes or the industrial/commercial equivalent.
"In response to market demand for the HPM, we have decided on a uranium
nitride-fueled, lead bismuth-cooled, fast reactor for our ‘launch’
design," said John R. Grizz Deal, Hyperion Power’s CEO. "For those
who like to categorize nuclear technologies, we suppose this advanced reactor
could be called a Gen IV++ design."We’ve written about Hyperion here on the blog and discussed it on the podcast
a couple of times. The idea of the portable power plant that can be carried
o the back of a truck certainly has its appeal. In addition to the environmental
and economic benefits already discussed, such a model would allow power to
be sourced locally, not subject to the vulnerabilities of a national grid.So now we’re talking about cheap and clean energy which is "safe"
in more than one sense of the word.Should we proceed cautiously when putting these new technologies in place?
Absolutely.We should proceed cautiously. Which not only means that we are cautious, by
the way.It means that we proceed.
Live to see it!