Do 2 Kilowatt Nuclear Reactor Still Exist

[Astronuc]

jim
this happened to be on front page of
website i was looking for for other post.
'Energy Department Takes First Step to Spur U.S. Manufacturing of Small Modular Nuclear Reactors'

Have A Nice Day!

www.grants.gov/search/search.do?mode=VIEW&oppId=138813 (The DOE is proposing a 50% cost share with industry)
www.ne.doe.gov/newsroom/2012PRs/nePR012012_print.htmlCached


http://www.ne.doe.gov/pdfFiles/factSheets/2012_SMR_Factsheet_final.pdf

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/commission/slides/2010/20100406/black-20100406.pdf

These are fairly chunky units afaik, minimally 50 megawatts.
But they are small compared to gigawatt beasts such as the AP 1000.

SMRs have a range of small capcities per module, but the point is to build several modules on one plant site. For example, 12 50MWe modules would provide 600 MW, or 5 125 MWe modules would provide a 625 MWe plant. With one module down, the others continue to operate, so the plant can conceivably achieve a high capacity factor (CF).

 

[average guy]

astro nuke
you just shot down what i was going to say
oh. they mean THAT kind of modular.
i thought it was one big unit where as things progress
they yank out a section and update with a new one.
'never mind'
note: astro nuke i hit report button by mistake on your post.
they need to move that button further away from 'reply'

Have A Nice Day!

 

[wizwom]

As others have noted, you could make a tabletop nuclear power plant in the kilowatt thermal range. The licensing, though, is just as crazy as for a 4 GW plant that takes up a square mile with all its support.

Bare-sphere nickel plated Pu (Jezebel) is about 12.6 cm diameter to sustain k=1; if you have a reflector you can bring close for a bit, you can bring k>1, if you put an absorber next to it, you go k<1.

Harvesting tiny amounts of power is an interesting problem, but a thermocouple or a sterling engine can do it.

 

[wizwom]

the Army built one that goes on a flatbed trailer truck. its intent was to make power for mobile communications centers back in the vacuum tube days..

That was the ML-1; it was designed for 350kW
http://www.atomicengines.com/ML1.html

The Antarctica unit was a PM-3A

 

[nikkkom]

I suppose you could take a thousand megawatt reactor, pull 2 kW off it and dump the other 999,998 kW as waste heat...

Or you can take Hanford's Cs and Sr canisters from their pool (see attached photo), put them into a RPV, let them heat up to ~300 C and run a turbine off their steam.

Granted, they generate only about 300 kilowatts, but the upside is that they need no stinking refueling for the next 50 years or so...