Interview with John Deal, Hyperion Power Generation

[Eletruk]

Hyperion power has plans to produce a reactor that you can transport on the back of a truck, generates 30 megawatts, lasts 8-10 years, and is recycleable. Not only that, they plan to start production levels at 400 a year, and ramp up from there.
If this thing actually delivers on it's promise, I can see transport ships switching to these for energy.

The cost for energy is about 5 cents KWh and would probably go down with higher production rates (although 400 reactors a year sounds like a lot to me).

The technology is apparently "walk away safe", meaning you don't even have to monitor the reactor's operation, it's self modulating, and can't go critical and explode by the very nature of the system.

http://www.techrockies.com/story/0017490.html

[leitmotif]

If it cannot go critical how are you going to get power out of it??
Going critical for a nuc is the same as bringing a diesel up to operation RPM.
1.0 critical is it meeting the load.
> 1 critical is it increasing output to meed demand load
aka SUPER CRITICAL
< 1 means you are not meeting load just cooling down. 
That is OK too cooler water absorbs more neutrons thus making more power.
They are almost self regulating

Just an ex submarine nuc.

Dan Bentler

[Eletruk]

Not being a nuclear plant engineer, what I can say is what I get out of the article. It's basically a hot box that generates 70 megawatts of heat for 8-10 years. It uses a hydride of 90% inert u-238 and 10% active u-235, It doesn't run quite the same as a nuclear reactor in that the fuel is not regulated by modulators be it water or graphite, it's simply self sustaining due to radioactive decay. It can't experience runaway thermal because the hydride mixture slows down the reaction when the materials overheat, therefore if it's too cold, it heats up, if it's too hot, it cools down. Self-regulating. It's called a TRIGA reactor and apparently there are already about 70 of these type around the world mostly as research reactors, and are the only reactor that the NRC has licensed for unattended operation.

[leitmotif]

Well radioactive decay does generate heat - no doubt about it.
Wonder about their size vs output claim. 
Seems to me awful small to get that much power from just decay.
Could not get their website to work so could not learn more.
Might just work though.

Dan Bentler

[Eletruk]

Well, once again they're in the news, they've now got a letter of intent for 6 devices. I like the idea, I hope they can pull it off.
Nuclear-In-A-Box Startup Hyperion Raising More Cash
http://earth2tech.com/2008/10/21/nuclear-in-a-box-startup-hyperion-raising-more-cash

[aviken]

This is indeed very interesting. I wonder how small they will end up making these...I mean down the road 20 years or so. A little scary to, but the price of progress has to have risks...