4 ms·
> Forgive my skepticism, but Mr. Thiel did not offer to live near a reactor. Living next to a coal plant is even more dangerous than a nuclear plant, are you s
by incepted 11y ago
> Forgive my skepticism, but Mr. Thiel did not offer to live near a reactor.
Living next to a coal plant is even more dangerous than a nuclear plant, are you suggesting we should ban both plants based on these considerations?
- ommunist 11y agoActually the late USSR had a technology of small fully automatic single loaded reactors for long-term supply of electric power in middle-size cities. Fully sealed unit. After use (decades) - you just cover it with a lawn. But back then the USSR had enough fuel in production. Right now the know how in Russia is lost and nuclear fuel generation is very weak. Also HMD generator by Oleg Gritckevitch was very promising. The town in Armenia was fed by electricity generated by a small prototype in 1988.
- selimthegrim 11y agoWhat happened to it during the earthquake?
- ommunist 11y agoThis http://www.google.co.uk/patents/US20040168716 http://www.google.co.uk/patents/US20040168716. Upd: Oleg died. His son has the know how. Armenian reactor was destroyed during the civil war. See also this http://www.padrak.com/vesperman/HMD_Presentation.ppt http://www.padrak.com/vesperman/HMD_Presentation.ppt
- jessaustin 11y agoFor some reason this reminded me of Anton and Ivan Vanko. Hopefully Tony Stark will stop fomenting regional conflict and just let Ivan get to work. b^)
- ommunist 11y agoIn this particular case Tony lured Ivan to US, swamped his efforts, Ivan being not familiar with fund raising and PR, hoped that brilliance of his invention will shine through any sh#t. It did not.
- selimthegrim 11y agoEr, this is a cold fusion claim, is it not?
- ommunist 11y agonope, this is different completely. the Gritskevitch idea is to get electric current from magnetism of liquid toroid propelling without friction. This was built in the late USSR. Two proof of concepts in Vladivostok, and one fully operational >2MW HMD generator in Armenia. The PPT I found at padrak with google search contains actual contacts of the son of the inventor. Yes, it's the odd place, but it seems, American Association of Clean Energy is not existing yet, so cannot host such things. I cry, when such tech is marginalized. Unfortunately for us, PR genius rarely shares the engineering brain, Tesla was an exception.
- prodmerc 11y agoYou mean like the Toshiba 4S? Most countries have designs for awesome stuff (at least on paper), which is never implemented for various reasons.
- ommunist 11y agoHave a look on early woRking prototypes of self-driving version for circumpolar regions http://cont.ws/post/128573 http://cont.ws/post/128573
- prodmerc 11y agoHuh, that's really interesting. Truly land (and sea) mobile nuclear power plants - I wonder why they gave up on them? Seems like an awesome idea for powering remote locations, for sure. Maybe they were deemed unsafe for military operations?
- ommunist 11y agoRight now Russia builds in St. Petersburg the first small fully automatic floating nuclear power plant. Up to 70 MW output. Saves 200Kt of coal from burning for every year of its use.
- ommunist 11y agoAnd this is from Gritskevitch http://www.padrak.com/vesperman/HMD_Presentation.ppt http://www.padrak.com/vesperman/HMD_Presentation.ppt
- chillingeffect 11y agoyes. Go solar and wind. England can trade something for clean energy.
- ommunist 11y agoyou mean 'financial services', right?