Toshiba's Neighborhood Nuke

Westinghouse AP1000 Nuclear Plant (Jan 25, 2006) drawing The News and Observer.
Click to Enlarge.

Micro-Nuke in Blogs; Not in Paper of Record.

All you have to do is google Toshiba micro nuclear and up come a bunch of links. Slashdot went freaking nuts on this, although the paper of record remains silent. (On this. Much to say on other issues. For example, it likes Sweeney Todd and Charlie Wilson's War. I may go see one of these myself this weekend. But I digress.)

Hmmmm.

Examining further, it certainly isn't the AP1000 I have the diagram of up top. That's massively too big. (Toshiba purchased Westinghouse last year.)

Engadget

It does seem like the company is well on its way to commercializing the design.

Toshiba's Micro Nuclear reactors are designed to power a single apartment building or city block, and measure a mere 20-feet by 6-feet. The 200 kilowatt reactor is fully automatic and fail-safe, and is completely self-sustaining. It uses special liquid lithium-6 reservoirs instead of traditional control rods, and can last up to 40 years, making energy for about 5 cents per kilowatt hour.

One of these with their ability to power just -- as Engadget points out -- an apartment building or a city block, would be perfect for a small data center, a call center, or a few of them for communities off the grid.

The key is regulatory approval.

Let me give you that again...

The key is regulatory approval AND dealing with NIMBY -- Not In My Back Yard.

I know this isn't the great progressive position to take, but I'm not reactionary about these things. I'd want to see the science, before rejecting it out of hand. Energy is the issue these days, and I'm interested in any solution which doesn't include a one-third to two-thirds die-off of the human race back to our normal pre-petroleum planet-wide carrying capacity. If nuclear is part of that solution, even for a hundred years, well, so be it.

Or shall we line up your family and have you watch one or two out of three die of starvation or worse as you sit there while we run out of oil? In the next fifteen to thirty years? Okay then. Moving on... (And yes, of course I'm open to rebuttals in comments. Please be polite, provide evidence to support your positions, and use a name, even if it's pseudonymous.)

I did a bunch of digging around and I think -- key word think -- that what they're talking about is a kind of Liquid Metal cooled Fast Reactor called the Rapid-L. This is not the 4S design (also talked about below.)

Encyclopedia of Earth

Liquid Metal cooled Fast Reactors

Fast neutron reactors have no moderator, a higher neutron flux and are normally cooled by liquid metal such as sodium, lead, or lead-bismuth, with high conductivity and boiling point. They operate at or near atmospheric pressure and have passive safety features (most have convection circulating the primary coolant). Automatic load following is achieved due to the reactivity feedback—constrained coolant flow leads to higher core temperature which slows the reaction. Primary coolant flow is by convection. They typically use boron carbide control rods.

A small-scale design developed by Toshiba Corporation in cooperation with Japan's Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry (CRIEPI) and funded by the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI) is the 5 MWt, 200 kWe Rapid-L, using lithium-6 (a liquid neutron poison) as a control medium. It would have 2700 fuel pins of 40-50% enriched uranium nitride with 2600°C melting point integrated into a disposable cartridge. The reactivity control system is passive, using lithium expansion modules (LEM) which give burnup compensation, partial load operation as well as negative reactivity feedback. As the reactor temperature rises, the lithium expands into the core, displacing an inert gas. Other kinds of lithium modules, also integrated into the fuel cartridge, shut down and start up the nuclear reactor. Cooling is by molten sodium, and with the LEM control system, reactor power is proportional to primary coolant flow rate. Refuelling would be every 10 years in an inert gas environment. Operation would require no skill, due to the inherent safety design features. The whole plant would be about 6.5 meters high and 2 meters in diameter.

The Super-Safe, Small & Simple (4S) 'nuclear battery' system is being developed by Toshiba and CRIEPI in Japan in collaboration with STAR work in USA. It uses sodium as coolant (with electromagnetic pumps) and has passive safety features, notably negative temperature and void reactivity. The whole unit would be factory-built, transported to site, installed below ground level, and would drive a steam cycle. It is capable of three decades of continuous operation without refuelling. Metallic fuel (169 pins 10mm in diameter) is uranium-zirconium or uranium-plutonium-zirconium alloy enriched to less than 20%. Steady power output over the core lifetime is achieved by progressively moving upwards an annular reflector around the slender core (0.68m diameter, 2m high). After 14 years, a neutron absorber at the center of the core is removed and the reflector repeats its slow movement up the core for 16 more years. In the event of power loss, the reflector falls to the bottom of the reactor vessel, slowing the reaction, and external air circulation gives decay heat removal.

Both 10 MWe and 50 MWe versions of 4S are designed to automatically maintain an outlet coolant temperature of 510°C—suitable for power generation with high temperature electrolytic hydrogen production. Plant cost is projected at US$2500/kW and power cost 5-7 cents/kWh for the small unit—very competitive with diesel in many locations. The design has gained considerable support in Alaska and toward the end of 2004 the town of Galena granted initial approval for Toshiba to build a 4S reactor in the remote location. A pre-application review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is being sought with a view to a demonstration unit operating by 2012. Its design is sufficiently similar to PRISM—GE's modular 150 MWe liquid metal-cooled inherently-safe reactor that went part-way through US NRC approval process, giving it favorable prospects for licensing.

There's more...

Well the thing looks real.

I wonder why all the sudden drama? Who is pushing to get this hyped?

We just got a significantly more friendly nuclear regulatory environment *waves to Vice President Cheney* so I wonder...

What the hell is going on?

There's more...

Valerie Plame Wilson on The Daily Show

Jon Stewart Interviews Valerie Plame Wilson
About her book "Fair Game"

No kidding, the CIA redacted passages having to do with breast feeding.

Seriously.

Welcome to Alice in Wonderland.

Great interview. And nice to see she's doing well.

There's more...

The Secret History of the Impending War

Esquire has an amazing article up.

It's long, and it's not just another, 'hey, there's a possible war with Iran' article. It lays out the last four years.

I'm giving you a few paras -- then go read.

You know how in your worst imaginations, you worried the Bush Administration was really much worse than you thought they were, that Cheney was TRULY crazy?

Turns out, he really is.

Also turns out, the whole war with Iran thing? Iran has been begging us since the day after 9/11 to negotiate unconditionally, everything on the table. Their nuclear program. Iran telling us specifically where all of the terrorists in the middle east were, during our war with Iraq. Anything we wanted. All of it, on the fucking table, over and over again.

We're talking a literal negotiating table. Talks were held. Actual talks.

The Office of the Vice President turned EVERYTHING down. He and people in his office refused everything Iran offered the United States.

Why?

Because it isn't enough for Iran to offer all this in exchange for anything. Got that?

It isn't enough for us to WIN. Our opponent has to LOSE. AAAAAAARGH!!!!!

In Dick "INSANE GUY" Cheney's world, the Iranians had to see the light and do everything because "it was the right thing to do."

No, I'm truly not kidding. That is why we turned down the offer from Iran to give up their nuclear program, to identify all terror activity in the middle east, and a bunch of other shit, really anything we wanted. We lost it all because it wasn't offered with absolutely no strings attached like they were the fucking British helping their best friends in the whole world.

Welcome to the Axis of Evil.

Esquire

The Secret History of the Impending War with Iran That the White House Doesn't Want You to Know

This is what Leverett and Mann fear will happen: The diplomatic effort in the United Nations will fail when it becomes clear that Russia's and China's geopolitical ambitions will not accommodate the inconvenience of energy sanctions against Iran. Without any meaningful incentive from the U.S. to be friendly, Iran will keep meddling in Iraq and installing nuclear centrifuges. This will trigger a response from the hard-liners in the White House, who feel that it is their moral duty to deal with Iran before the Democrats take over American foreign policy. "If you get all those elements coming together, say in the first half of '08," says Leverett, "what is this president going to do? I think there is a serious risk he would decide to order an attack on the Iranian nuclear installations and probably a wider target zone."

This would result in a dramatic increase in attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, attacks by proxy forces like Hezbollah, and an unknown reaction from the wobbly states of Afghanistan and Pakistan, where millions admire Iran's resistance to the Great Satan. "As disastrous as Iraq has been," says Mann, "an attack on Iran could engulf America in a war with the entire Muslim world."

Mann and Leverett believe that none of this had to be.

*shudders*

Go. Read.

Frankly, I'm starting to think Treason is the operative word here. We're long past High Crimes. This isn't simple incompetence or an ideological point of view. I have to start wondering if Dick Cheney isn't intentionally setting the middle east afire from one end to the other to send oil to $300-$400 a barrel, in order to make his own portfolio and that of his patrons blow through the roof. Halliburton would triple in value as would oil stocks. It's time to ask a Special Prosecutor to look at Dick Cheney on the grounds of Treason.

In the meantime, the Joint Chiefs and The President of Russia hold the line against a madman occupying the office of the Vice President, and his buddy-pal, yet another sociopath in the Oval.

Let us hope we make it fourteen months to the election -- and another four beyond that to the inauguration, without a genuine constitutional crisis. Because it ain't like it's past these fuckers to let the election happen, then start a full-out war during the 100 days of the President-elect. You know, just for kicks.

Come on JCS... hold the goddamn line.

There's more...

Boom Chicka Boom: Cat's in the Cradle

Atomic Bomb Code Name Baker, Bikini Atoll, Height Minus 90 Feet Underwater,
Burst 21 kilotons Yield. July 23, 1946 0835 local time. photo US Military.

Russia Launches Successful Test Of Ballistic Missile

Big yellow air-raid sirens all over Tucson when I was growing up.

Every Saturday, 1 PM they'd start low and WAIL up to a HIGH TONE and HOOOOOOOLD, I said, HOOOOOOOLD, we're not done yet, it's HOOOOOOOLD..OOOOLD..OOOL..OOL and down, down, down she goes and where she stops no.

Okay, enough. Done now. Everyone, back to work.

Cold war.

Plus, as an added bonus, Tucson had Davis-Monthan Air Force Base with its B-52 bombers (and their Special Weapons), Plus THERE'S MORE.

We had three SAC Titan ICBM Missile Wings literally encircling Tucson.

Yeah, we were a TARGET with a capital T, and that rhymes with you're fucking dead. But we don't talk about it, because it upsets Mrs. Clag and Mrs. Crigger.

USA TODAY

The Topol RS-12M rocket hit its intended target on Kamchatka near the Pacific Ocean, the Russian Strategic Missile Forces said in a statement. The launch, from the Plesetsk launch facility in northern Russia, was part of the country's plan to upgrade its ballistic missiles and extend the life of its Topol missiles.

The successful test will allow Russia to maintain the Topol rocket for 21 years, the statement said, significantly more than the original 10 years forecast.

The Cold War is dead.

Long live the Cold War.

Who the hell would have thought I'd be happy to see a Russian missile launch and a former KGB dude hanging with an Iranian guy I can't stand and don't trust, as our last best hope of preventing what I consider to be a clinically sociopath Vice President and his dry-drunk also sociopath and massively incompetent President, from starting a war with Iran which the Joint Chiefs have refused to go to.

I'm not even certain that sentence has a subject.

Anyway, this launch is a good thing. Anything which keeps the Cheney/Bush people away from paying attention to the reality you and I are coupled in, long enough for the rest of us to get out alive and not in a civil or world war, is a very, very good deal.

Note to self. Don't post tired. Is too honest. Also, speaks missing article in sentence. Sound Russian. Da. No laughing, you who hate American. Grrr.

There's more...