Talk-Polywell.org

When does a war become a world war ?

(Says he seeing the current war thats being going on for a while just as real as WWI or WWII..)

I'd say it was a world war when it consumes 20% of world output.

Right now I'd estimate it at less than 1%.

BTW that reactor story is at least 2 years old and there has been no follow up I'm aware of. I could see such nukes used in guarded industrial processes. Sitting unguarded in your local neighborhood? Too risky. Once you add guards the cost of electricity goes way up because of the low capacity. Not enough KWhs to spread the cost sufficiently.

I know this is straying off subject but what's the negative scenario with the toshiba reactor? That someone will dig it up, stick it on a flatbed, haul it to the desert, and manage to get the uranium out without killing themselves first? Then if they do all that, what have they got? Maybe dirty bomb material but not A-weapon grade stuff...

Yes, dirty bombs that can be set off with a ton of amnonium nitrate parked over the reactor.

Not to mention accidents caused by leaking sodium/lithium.

it ruins property values.

JohnP wrote:

BTW that reactor story is at least 2 years old and there has been no follow up I'm aware of. I could see such nukes used in guarded industrial processes. Sitting unguarded in your local neighborhood? Too risky. Once you add guards the cost of electricity goes way up because of the low capacity. Not enough KWhs to spread the cost sufficiently.

I know this is straying off subject but what's the negative scenario with the toshiba reactor? That someone will dig it up, stick it on a flatbed, haul it to the desert, and manage to get the uranium out without killing themselves first? Then if they do all that, what have they got? Maybe dirty bomb material but not A-weapon grade stuff...

Hahaha look up Galena Alaska on google earth. You can fly there, or take a several day ride on a boat when the river isn't frozen over. The project itself is supposedly still viable. I haven't followed it closely but it's at the trying to get a license stage I believe. As far as why Toshiba selected the locations. There's various reasons having to do with it's history and location that facilitate such a project.

The Toshiba design is actually an old one now. Several other companies have come up with better solutions(some potential thorium burners) but nothing ready to produce yet. Lessons learned from the older, more complex Toshiba design would transfer over I'm sure.

Should the late Mr. Bussard's concept work out (hopefully) there's still a place for these potential "nuclear" batteries. Small, remote communities that don't need 100 MW installations. Industrial applications also come to mind where the output desired is predominately heat. As you pointed out the risk factor is very low in a real world scenario. Terrorists/anarchists would have far easier targets needing far smaller amounts of equipment and resources by simply going over to a nearby chemical plant as an example.

Hell there's a 200 KW design being bandied about that, if total installed cost was somewhere close to $ 300K, I'd jump on immediately for my business. Even on a fifteen year note I'd make out like a bandit having such a thing for heating and electric.