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In an emergency bug out, one needs the ability to destroy or render safe and inoperable anything and everything. How the hell would that work with a reactor? Se
by lvs 5y ago
In an emergency bug out, one needs the ability to destroy or render safe and inoperable anything and everything. How the hell would that work with a reactor? Seems like a bad situation.
- bpodgursky 5y agoA 1to 5 MW reactor isn't going to have a lot of actual fuel... you could probably pull the actual weaponizable fuel pellets and shielding into something the size of a briefcase and leave the generation infrastructure behind. (I dunno if they are built this way, it just doesn't seem particularly impossible).
- __turbobrew__ 5y agoSo you are going to put the fissile material which operates at muti megawatts in a briefcase and carry it away? Disregarding the health and safety issues of the briefcase carrier the briefcase is sure to turn into a pile of molten radioactive sludge very quickly.
- fooker 5y agoYes, of course. Below critical mass for chain reaction, fissile material deteriorates fairly quickly into stable isotopes.
- rrss 5y agothe multi-megawatts comes from the nuclear chain reaction. presumably any package used to transport fuel would prevent criticality.
- adrianN 5y agoI believe the 1% of nominal output is a reasonable ballpark for cooling requirements after a reactor is shut down. 1% of 1MW is still 10kW. You probably don't want to transport that in a briefcase.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Lammy 5y ago> the briefcase is sure to turn into a pile of molten radioactive sludge Nah those have already existed for a long time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Johnny555 5y agoThey could probably render the reactor inoperable by destroying the supporting equipment around the nuclear core, but couldn't they just plan on flying it out? I don't know how heavy the military's reactor is, but this 1MW reactor claims to fit in a shipping container and able to be flown or trucked out: The microreactor is designed to fit in a shipping container and can be easily transported by air, ship, and road https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-science-technology-business-us-department-of-defense-8e719afd9538b14cb8aa0c4031deb31b https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-science-technology-busi...
- jacobn 5y agoA plan C still sounds like a good idea.
- lultimouomo 5y agoBlow it up and let the local population deal with the fallout? Backlash would be huge, yet I think it could happen, in a "Oops we fucked up, see ya!" situation.
- masklinn 5y agoNo need to blow it out, I would hope an SMR (or MMR) would be designed with full containment in case of meltdown, so you can trigger a meltdown on your way out, and whoever arrives gets a bunch of corium encased in heavy shielding.
- idontwantthis 5y agoI do like the idea of leaving behind an object that's not dangerous, it's just so incredibly heavy that it greatly inconveniences the enemy.
- azernik 5y agoCorium is absolutely dangerous - it take heavy equipment and time to break it apart and use it, and the stuff tends to be so massively radioactive it'll kill most gear and people who try to do the job. The shielding, in this case, serves to protect innocent bystanders who aren't trying to pull the thing apart. Though I would still not want to live close by - intentional "safe" meltdowns are not a well-explored technology.
- MertsA 5y agoYou could transfer the clean fuel as a powder and pelletize and assemble fuel bundles on-site. Just mix the powder with a bunch of frangible containers of depleted uranium powder like glass cylinders and if the need arises or in an emergency situation (crash in transport), you've mixed the mildly enriched reactor grade fuel with enough depleted uranium to make it largely worthless. For an operating reactor it would definitely need to be passively safe. If you went with a molten salt breeder reactor or even just a non-breeder like the MSRE you could dump the fuel salt into your drain tanks mixed with a bunch of some boron compound. You could set off small charges to spray a bunch of dimethylmercury all over the outside of the reactor to kill anyone foolish enough to enter the building. I think that would be banned by the Geneva convention but the point is that there are ways of "salting the earth" within a short amount of time.
- masklinn 5y agoI would expect µMR to be no different than SMR or subs: not refuelable on-site, they’d be delivered fuelled up would run for 10-30 years, and would be shipped back to factory for either disposal or rebuild at EOL.
- sandworm101 5y agoThis thing isn't for a forward operating base. This would be at locations so large that any "bug out" would occur over a matter of weeks.
- mrfusion 5y agoHave you been watching the news lately …
- azernik 5y agoThe American evacuation was going on for weeks or months; e.g. by the time of the Afghan government's collapse, Bagram (giant Air Force base) had been quite cleanly evacuated. The logistical problem of exit is something the US has always been very good at. It's the political aspects it has problems with.
- troyvit 5y agoSnopes[0] estimates that we left about $10 billion worth of equipment in Afghanistan. For reference that's about half of Afghanistan's 2020 GDP[1]. [0] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/us-taliban-arsenal-military-equipment/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/us-taliban-arsenal-militar... [1] https://tradingeconomics.com/afghanistan/gdp https://tradingeconomics.com/afghanistan/gdp
- azernik 5y agoWhich was all Afghan National Army gear. I would damned well hope that the US would not give portable nuclear reactors to a shaky ally.
- 542354234235 5y agoHave you? The military had a fairly orderly evacuation according to schedule over several months. What was unexpected was how quickly and completely the Taliban would take over the country, which made civilians, which were not planning on leaving, attempt to flee.
- mikewarot 5y agoIf it was a molten salt thorium chloride reactor, they could just dump the core into a series of horizontal pipes to cool, making it subcritical. Then they could load those pipes into a few vehicles for egress. The reactor itself could then be disabled with shaped charges, etc.
- masklinn 5y agoTBF they don’t seem to have much bothered with that when leaving afghanistan, and if the µMR is fully sealed, all the other guy would get is a 1MW electric generator, or nothing and a hefty dose of dying if they breach containment.
- mrfusion 5y agoDesign it with a fail safe shutdown?
- AngryData 5y agoIf they made the core material removable then the bulk of the machinery would be worthless. 98% of the effort in reactor power is sourcing/producing the nuclear material. There are also ways to poison the core so that it is inoperable unless you got a large nuclear processing facility to remove the contaminates from the core material. But I find that an inferior solution since it leaves behind dirty bomb materials.
- azernik 5y agoProbably make the interior (inside the shielding) so massively radioactive that no human or machine can survive long enough to extract anything.