Visioning 2026 Blog
A Nuclear Reactor in your Community
From a NASA e-letter on Dec 1, 2008:
A company in New Mexico has started producing hot-tub-sized nuclear generators they hope will soon provide communities throughout America with affordable energy. Powered by low-enriched uranium fuel, each Hyperion Power Module will reportedly produce enough clean, safe, and environmentally friendly energy to reliably power 20,000 standard American homes for 10 cents per watt. The units will be factory sealed, buried underground, and guarded for maximum security. Each module will produce a softball-sized amount of recyclable waste every five years, no greenhouse gases whatsoever, and there is no risk of meltdown because the fuel cools instantly if a module is opened. 75% of NASA e-letter readers polled said they wouldn't mind having a small nuclear reactor in their community to power their homes with nuclear energy.
Very interesting break through. I read a similar article. Here are a couple website references.
http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf33.html
This will further reinforce the need for distributed and local transmission systems geared closer to customer consumption. I make this connection with the value of network theory described in the book "Linked, How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What it Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life," by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi. This book is also supporting what we are experiencing with social networking websites.
I suspect this will put some pressure on the coal powered electric generations systems that support the rail transportation systems and associated mining companies and states. Instead of building coal powered generators to pickup the growing peak loads this new technology should direct a more decentralized funding and development effort. It will be interesting to see if NPPD jumps on the bandwagon since they are currently promoting coal gasification projects since we are close to the coal fields in Wyoming. Given the pricing for one of these units it is well within a community's thresholds for issuing bonds to pay for a community system. Now tie in solar and wind power at the local level, even at the home site, and we have lower costs for supporting electric vehicles and producing hydrogen for future transportation systems.
Could we see Nucor Steel investing and installing several of these units to reduce their energy costs? This could give them a better control on costs and make them more competitive in the world market. Or does it make more since for Nucor to build a steel facility closer to their source of material and customers and include their own power generation source? How could this affect Nucor operations in Norfolk?
Wow.... the world around us is changing even faster than ever.
Mark
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