Interesting article...
In the air-conditioned chill of the visitors' area, a grad student runs through the basics. Instead of the white-hot fuel rods that fire the heart of a conventional reactor, HTR-10 is powered by 27,000 billiards-sized graphite balls packed with tiny flecks of uranium. Instead of superhot water - intensely corrosive and highly radioactive - the core is bathed in inert helium. The gas can reach much higher temperatures without bursting pipes, which means a third more energy pushing the turbine. No water means no nasty steam, and no billion-dollar pressure dome to contain it in the event of a leak. And with the fuel sealed inside layers of graphite and impermeable silicon carbide - designed to last 1 million years - there's no steaming pool for spent fuel rods. Depleted balls can go straight into lead-lined steel bins in the basement.
So we have the turbine side covered bud.. what are your prospects for hoarding uranium?
As far as fuelish?
"Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies, and the media. … Even if they were right about its dangers - and they are not - its worldwide use as our main source of energy would pose an insignificant threat compared with the dangers of intolerable and lethal heat waves and sea levels rising to drown every coastal city of the world. We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources; civilization is in imminent danger and has to use nuclear, the one safe, available energy source, now, or suffer the pain soon to be inflicted by our outraged planet."
DUH? "Hollywood-style fiction"? Dunno about that. TMI did have a meltdown. The brain power in PA during the incident wasn't so swift.. imagine the same plant in Arkansas.
Little off kilter there I think.
Like TV. Sure they have 43" Tubes.. but the mass is a huge problem. So they are "trying" other technology like "LCD", "plasma" and "rear projection". Sure they are not close to the quality and life of a tube, but they are steps toward the common goal. Likewise we need alternatives. Like notebooks powered by hydrogen cells (until the water leaks out at the back and causes a short circuit).
Cheers!
blake
"When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk."
Tuco (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly)
"An umbrella with holes is better than no umbrella at all."
Dr. Alexander Elder on using stops.
