....
It was the weight of shielding needed that killed the nuclear bomber. An unmanned nuclear ramjet cruise missile project was started a few years after the bomber idea was dropped.
It was intended to travel at very low level at Mach 3, which would have left a trail of devastation and radioactive debris behind it.
Colin Bignell
That has the appealing feature of not putting water next to molten salt.
Andy
Fiction, but Charlie does his research:
Not really.
Bit of xenon and iodine 131 maybe. But from altitude it wouldn't have been a lot at ground level...
There's also the IFR that was being proposed a year ago for dealing with the UK's Pu stockpile (not sure what happened to that idea)
Because they are saying they can make it in a factory, ship it to site, fuel it up and be producing 500 MW for $1.5 billion. I don't believe it. And it's *not* MIT, it is two grad students.
On Saturday 16 March 2013 10:29 newshound wrote in uk.d-i-y:
"ready to be fueled "
So the cost is the plant alone minus the fuel. I have no idea if 1.5 billion is realistic - but if it is a modular shippable unit, I have no reason to not believe it.
As good as...
These are MIT PhD candidates, so they are not stupid, to even have got to that position.
Look at the Advisory board:
Apart from the Head of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT, they've got some pretty heavywieght people on there - whom are not likely to want to be tarnished with a project doomed to failure.
So confidence in the project is evidently very good.
It would not have been at altitude. Like the TSR2, it was designed to be a hedge hopper, to stay below radar.
Colin Bignell
No on expects you to do anything. What level of arrogance makes you think they do?
Valid point about the fuel. Even without that I don't remotely believe the cost for a first unit. They are claiming to have found the holy grail. I don't believe that either. When they start to build one, I'll start to take an interest.
On 16/03/2013 11:57, newshound wrote: ...
If by holy grail you mean a reactor that runs on depleted uranium, Toshiba is expected to have one of those, their 4S mini reactor, in production next year. Bill Gates is reported as going into partnership with them, although it unclear whether that is on the 4S or on future developments in the field.
Colin Bignell
On Saturday 16 March 2013 11:57 newshound wrote in uk.d-i-y:
I suspect the 1.5 billion must make some assumptions about selling a few units to amortise the research and testing.
I wonder what "modular" means in this case? They can't really do a "genny in a 20ft container, drop down and press START" approach, but will this be:
1) Stick a concrete raft down, plop lots of pre assembled and tested metal boxes in prescribed locations and a field engineer will nip over and plug them together;or
2) More of a "flat pack log cabin" - big kit of parts, few engineers and lots of blokes and end up with something that looks a bit more like a conventional power station but in pre-fab.I'd put my fiver on the latter. Still very interesting.
Don't they? If they don't expect me to do anything, why did they post the link?
For the non-arrogant readers.
in the full knowledge that you were a total prat, and therefore not actually worth talking to you.
HINT: the world is not entirely all; about YOU.
Really? That's astonishing.
When the academics start bitching, what hope for the rest of us?
I get very irritated when people complain that someone's posting style doesn't suit them.
Ignore it, or say something constructive,
OK, then in future I'll just ignore links posted without any sort of accompanying summary that indicates the purpose of the post. ISTR someone complaining recently when dennis did that, but I can't remember who it was now.
Not me anyway.
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