Nuh-uh.

I don't want one til they can generate 1.21 Jigawatts.

Seriously, though....a home nuclear plant? Who the hell uses hundreds of kilowatts at home? I don't even think Bill Gates could manage that.

@Gopherit: True. But you could set up micro-reactors like this for neighborhoods, small towns, huge office and apartment blocks.

It'd definitely put a bit of a pinch on Con-Ed.

I love this sight!

Before I started reading here I didn't even know what Nukular Panner Plant was!

Splendid. Soon I'll have all the tasty, three-eyed fish I can eat..Yum!

But before you rush out to buy it, be aware that Sony's also coming out with Gren-Nuk reactors that cost more but store waaaaaaaaay more neutrons.

But I gotta say, buy it now, don't pay any more heating bills for the next 30 years? Hmmmm...

Not to mention being able to say, "hey sweetheart, wanna come over and see my nukular reactor?"

Sign me up!

Fission = dangerous
Fusion = safe

Hmmmm?

i'm not sure i want the guy that fixes my hot water heater that close to a working nuclear reactor...

@tetracycloide: The guy that fixes my hot water heater is, himself, a nuclear-powered robot, so I'm good.

But if you call now, this nuclear reactor can double as the hot-water heater AND the clothes dryer, not to mention the microwave oven! Just remove the metal cladding!

/popeil'd

has anybody read "The Radioactive Boy Scout" [www.amazon.com]
It sorta reminds me of this post....Its back when boy scouts actually had fun with the atomic energy merit badge not like the "political Correct" Badge they have now

Well, I'll certainly need one to charge up my flying car.

Oh wait.

@RusM: Well not to worry because after a long drawn out battle, Toshiba will discontinue its line because Sony bribed NRDC for $40M

Fission in reasonable quantities is no more dangerous than the gasoline you put in your car or the methane (natural gas) that you use at home.

But of course, fear-mongering neo-cons run this country, with campaigns such as was mounted against the Black Fox Reactor in Inola, OK, USA. Carrie Dickerson bankrupted herself to fight it.

So, I doubt I could get zoning permission to install one here in the same state.

I can't really see private citizens owning these things, but it would be a wonderful thing to see in small neighborhoods. Couple these things with a system of windmill turbines and garbage plasma-incinerators and we might just have a way to break national dependence on foreign energy.

The only problem will be finding the million or so security personnel required for the government to allow these things into private hands without having to worry about dirty-bombs and the like.

Maybe we should just install a a couple million of these things in Mexico and just run the wires...oh...wait...

@okvol: You want to install one in Oklahoma? That's the most vulnerable state in the union!

For Christ's sake, man, do you want the terorrists to win?

if there's a quake I'm sure people would freak. but then again look at what we have now...tons and tons of natural gas that ignites during a quake.

heck I'd not mind these myself it meant we could tell the middle east to flake off and not buy their stupid oil anymore.

@Woland: The government could afford to be a lot less worried about dirty bombs if they actually examined the research involved, and discovered that you couldn't make them.

Still, they'd probably really worried about regular nukular bombs, anyway.

Whatever happened to Pebble Reactors? Each pebble is small amount of nucular material encased on a golf-ball sized 'pebble' of graphite. Alone, they are inert, but pile a bunch atop each other and they generate heat.

@braak: it's almost like the government makes up problems to convince people that they need their money in order to fix them...

Remember, Edison didn't think AC power was safe enough for home use either.

And thanks to Dickerson, herself a damned dirty neocon C. U. Next Tuesday (if I can paraphrase you, Okvol), Oklahoma is now powered by sweet-smelling, clean burning coal! Easier to mine than it is to burn, coal is the coal of the future!

@tetracycloide: Stupid government!

@AUA: Yay, coal!

@braak: the government... do RESEARCH?

You have obviously never worked for them on any level have you? Im still cleaning up a government mess RIGHT NOW that was sparked all because they cant use one set of data for everything but need us to send 3 all saying the same thing, but coded differently for different computer systems.....

"But of course, fear-mongering neo-cons run this country, with campaigns such as was mounted against the Black Fox Reactor in Inola, OK, USA."

Neocons fighting nukes? Usually it's the liberals who fight nukes...

@Falconfire: Well, see, that's the problem--it's not that they don't do research. Doing research is great, because they can all pay their cousins to work on it. The problem is that no one ever reads it.

@SavannahJack:

No.

Fission = reasonably safe especially compared to, for example, coal.

Fusion = no one knows how to make it work, or whether it will or will not be safe, in the eventuality that anyone learns to make it work.

BTW, a town in Alaska has been trying to buy one of these micro-reactors for years now. It would make a lot of sense for them since they're so isolated.
-Kle.

I ain't afraid of no nukes. Bring it on. These $300 a month utility bills to XCEL must stop.

Which is why they won't ever be approved. XCEL needs the money.

"But of course, fear-mongering neo-cons run this country

Ha ha ha! Yeah, because the Left is *so* supportive of nuke power. LOL!

@braak: Yup....or, if they can ever get fuel cells stable enough, we can blow off fission and use those. Either way, they'd beat the hell out of carbon-based fuels for efficiency.

@The_Real_Quiet_Desperation: There's a surprising amount of support in the left for nuclear power in the states. Generally as a temporary measure, admittedly.

@Klebert: Yeah, they've been saying we're 20 years from working fusion plants for the last 30-40 years. I think the closest we'll ever get to a working fusion plant is the one that spends ~12 hrs/day over the horizon.
He're able to harness that energy marginally now. That can almost certainly be improved on, too.

I never really understood why you'd want to pile (pardon the pun) enough uranium or plutonium that you could have a critical mass when sub-critical amounts can work for turning turbines, too. Yeah, you can get a hell of a lot more energy out of a reactor running at the hairy edge, but it brings too many drawbacks/potential problems to the table.

So, who is going to swap out my reactor in 30 years if Toshiba goes out of business?

Will they let me replace my furnace and my hot water heater with this thing too?

I can't even get a microwave to last for more than 5 years. How do they expect a steam turbine nuclear generator to last 30?

@Dillenger69: Easy! They just design them to last for 30 years.

You put Safety Labels on everything and people still fuck up, and now you seriously consider handing out Nuclear Reactors? ARE YOU RETARDED!?

I agree with "okvol" the biggest problem is to overcome people's ignorance and fear. If this had been the approach to atomic power 50 or 60 years ago we might not have a problem with so much nuclear waste. The only reason to have reactors which produce "deadly waste" is because they are "breader reactors", which are necessary to produce fissionable material, which is necessary to produce nuclear weapons(i.e. the atom and hydrogen bombs).

Anyone know where I can get some gas centrifuges?

Just asking. Don't look at me like that.

I want two.

Decentralizing the electrical grid is vital for defense. We could not survive without electricity.

If one were going to take out the US, that'd be the best way to go: simple, easy and lethal...and George Dumbya's felonious cronies haven't done jack sh*t about it.

@nygenxer: "Decentralizing the electrical grid is vital for defense"....

It's not a grid, Southern District....

I hope the Japanese Defense Ministry decides to use the mini nuclear plant for their next generation Gundams.

I'm looking forward to this. (Oh god, I can't stop myself...) Power to the People! (Now I need to go have wash.)

@Gopherit: I'm not sure the drawbacks of critical mass is too much, when subcritical mass tends to die out overtime. More so than critical really. I mean, that's why it's called critical in the first place. Because it's the self-sustaining part that's desirable.

There was a time when the nuclear power proponents claimed that nuclear power would be so cheap that it wouldn't be worth the cost of sending utility users, bills each month. Hmmm, didn't work out that way.

This reminds me of the Rural Electrification Project which was trying to develop small portable reactors for the areas of the country that didn't have electricity. It all went to hell when one of their reactors exploded killing the engineers working on it. Then the fire fighters showed up thinking they were putting out a fire and were exposed to massive amounts of radiation.

Actually I've always wondered why RTGs and betavoltaic batteries never became a big thing in consumer power generation. Seriously, from the stuff I've read over the last 20 years, we really are getting better at recycling and nullifying radioactive waste.

Not saying we shouldn't develop and implement solar energy, wind and tidal. As a technoprogressive I'm just saying that it time we re-examine the viability of nuclear sources of energy. The knee-jerk hatin' simplifies things too much.

@Gopherit:

But what makes the fuel for the fuel cell, or do you want to run the fuel cells on hydrocarbons?
-Kle.

@Klebert: Ah, the perennial problem with hydrogen fuel cells. Where the hell do you get the hydrogen?

I'm glad to know I won't be subject to an IAEA inspection team every month if I decide to go nuke. I'd fear them far more than the meter readers from Virginia Power!

So, a quick google finds only gadget websites covering this (back in december), and more to the point, this page debunking this story. I can find information on the Toshiba 4S being a nuclear reactor for Galena, Alaska, and the company implementing the project agrees with that.

Not to say you didn't get some of the facts right. just the scale's a little off. A quick check on wikipedia should have clued you in to maybe investigate a bit more...

Nice idea. Shame it's mostly fiction.

Then again, this site is strung out on science fiction...

The killer app for this is hydrogen generation. Sign me the fuck up. Put a generator in every gas station, which are already prepared and zoned for hazardous materials.

Why has nobody commented on the fact that it looks like a warp core?