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We can't get the enviro nazis to let us build the big ones; what possible business model tells you that you will be able to ship these out like used Volkswagons?
If the enrichment is anything like the Navy cores, you get an automatic No F in way. One of the reasons that the submarine core is so compact is because it is enriched to very high levels, and regardless of your comparison, it is a very compact design. To operate at anything like full power for 5 years (5 EFPY), the fissile fuel loading of your core must be at least comparable to the old S5W cores; with low enrichment you have to have geometry of the core sufficiently large to alloow for the less thatn 3% thermal content. Who is going to let you load these puppies with anything even close to weapons grade uranium?
The uranium hydride fuel is very unique (liquid metal reactor). It's uranium hydride. UH3 is the chemical formula. Low-enriched, about 10 percent [uranium isotope]-235, the rest is U-238. By comparison, bomb-grade fuel is about 98 percent enriched.
You can't turn our fuel into a bomb. You'd have to re-enrich, re-process the fuel, so you might as well start with yellowcake. That's one of the neat safety features of our reactor. For nefarious purposes, our reactor has absolutely no value whatsoever.
The neat thing about UH3, about uranium hydride, is it's a moderator and an emergency cooling system in one. It's chemical composition—and we say it's been designed by God to be the prefect nuclear fuel—when uranium hydride gets too hot, when the reaction gets a little out of hand, it will start shedding those hydrogen atoms naturally, which turns off the nuclear fires and, if necessary, cools down the reactor. This happens very, very fast.
So it's self-governing?
John R. "Grizz" Deal: It's self-governing. We have the patent on this specific application of uranium hydride for nuclear energy. But the discovery that uranium hydride was not appropriate for letting a chain reaction get out of hand (to make a weapon) was made decades ago. It was sort of like, "Gee, that's a dud," because, at the time, they were only interested in a chain reaction that resulted in some sort of explosion.
The waste that comes out of our reactor after powering 20,000 homes for 8-10 years is about the size of a football. Using coal and gas over the same time frame, the waste stream for just you, after factoring in CO2 emissions, would overflow Mile High Stadium in Denver. So our waste stream is very concentrated, and yes, we have to do something with it, but there are known ways of dealing with it.
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From 1939-1953 - Edward Teller (the guy who really perfected a lot of the different kinds of nuclear bombs) tried to make a uranium hydride bomb.
From wikipedia
After World War II, Los Alamos physicists were skeptical of uranium hydride in weapons. Edward Teller remained interested, however, and he and Ernest Lawrence experimented with the devices in the early 1950s at UCRL (later Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory).
RUTH, which used ordinary hydrogen-1, was the first device entirely designed at Livermore; it was fired on March 31, 1953 at 05:00 local time (13:00 GMT) at Mercury, Nevada. The explosive device, Hydride I, weighed 7400lb and was 56 inches in diameter and 66 inches long. The predicted yield was 1.5 to 3.0 kilotons, but the actual yield was only 200 tons. Wally Decker, a young Laboratory engineer, characterised the sound the shot made as "pop." The 200 feet of the 300-foot-tall testing tower remained intact, although the upper third was destroyed.
A second device, RAY, used deuterium. It was fired on a 100-foot tower on April 11, 1953. Although RAY managed to level the tower, the yield was similarly disappointing: again 200 tons, as opposed to the predicted 0.5-1 kT.
===200 tons of TNT equivalent using Uranium hydride materials under optimum conditions for explosion. Fully enriched etc...
The biggest conventional bombs have about 44 tons of TNT equivalent
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The best place to place the UH reactors is on the site of existing nuclear reactors which normally have several square miles of space and also on the site of coal power plants. Get rid of the coal plants and use the in place power lines, land and have 50-100 of the smaller UH reactors. Plus they would be used supervised in industrial settings - like at oilsand and oilshale locations. BTW: oil refineries and oil storage can make very big explosions if things go wrong there.
Later there could be some secure set up like a bank vault with automatic alarms, satellite monitoring etc... The things are "portable" but still weigh 15-20 tons. Big equipment is needed to move it. Advanced lo-jack devices can be placed in them.
US Naval reactors are pressurised water types, which differ from commercial reactors producing electricity in that:
* they have a high power density in a small volume and therefore run on highly-enriched uranium (>20% U-235, originally c93% but apparently now c20-25% in western vessels, twice this in Russian ones),
* the fuel is not UO2 but a metal-zirconium alloy (c15%U with 93% enrichment, or more U with lower enrichment).
US reactors were nearer to the 98% enrichment level of bombs but are now down to 20-25%.
The key as noted by the CEO of Hyperion is. Is it easier to start with raw yellow cake uranium or is it easier to raid the UH nuclear reactor ?
The first sales of this UH reactor are to eastern europe. 25 of the big standard nuclear reactors are being reviewed for licensing now. The US has completed Browns Ferry nuclear reactor in 2007 and is completing Watts Bar.China is mass producing AP-1000 reactors and could have 100 built or being built by 2020.
Been disappointed too many times in the past, I guess.