Imagine a reactor unit, fully contained, no larger than a Mac Mini M4 Pro. With a home grid connection to a smart meter and bi directional charging point with a feed in tariff for V2X applications, using a vehicle or home battery store.
Specified for just 1kW continuous output. And for each unit to last 10 years before mandatory return to factory for reprocessing.
This would require between 5g and 10g of uranium fuel per unit, if using the rankine or stirling cycles for example. It may have to use different thermodynamics in the final design. Whatever is used the device will be continuously trying to get rid up up to 3kW of heat at 30% efficiency.
Innovation would be delivered by development of a better heat exchanger and efficiency. Ideal innovation would be the invention of a fundamentally new way of converting the fission reaction energy, or whatever may be, to power output, preferably electricity.
Making it modular means it can be stacked for differing sizes of homes and commercial properties. There are only practical limits to this due to space available.
For now, put down any hysteria about safety or waste. This program is asking - if these concerns were fully mitigated, would you be willing to support the idea, all else being equal.
If not the show is over obviously for political reasons. For example, wind and solar are now huge in sun free and wind challenged nations. So it can be done if the will is there and the state forces it onto the people.
Clearly radiation hysteria and the euphemism we call nuclear waste are not really limiting factors.
Mr. Musk, please put Mars Base on hold, great though that goal is. And deliver this system as soon as possible.
* Note - the term 'femto' comes from scientific notation in standard SI prefixes, in this case, one quadrillionth of something. Or 10e-15. And the term pico which we would have preferred is already used up for generation of electricity of up to several megawatts and we're proposing several kilowatts, 3 orders down.
Patent Pending 12 November 2024, London.
Great idea ! I want one for my zero energy flux, passive and positive energy ecohouse in the near suburbs of Paris. My house requires very little energy so just one or two one kW units is more than enough and I will sell most of it back to the grid and just use that 1 or 2 baseline kW as a backup for when my solar panels produce nothing on cloudy days and at night. Of course the radiation isn’t a serious issue and is easy to protect from. When do you open the pre-reservations ?
ReplyDeleteBruno Comby
President of Environmentalists For nuclear Energy (EFN)
Reservations for early adopters are open immediately. Then all we need is to sway the worldview of powerful 'muskites' or harder still, la grande masse.
ReplyDeleteI've wanted an ecohome since I qualified as a code assessor at the UK's Buildings Research Establishment back in 2008.