Taylor Wilson was 14 when he built a nuclear fusion reactor in his parents' garage. Now 19

[razee]

he returns to the TED stage to present a new take on an old topic: fission. Wilson, who has won backing to create a company to realize his vision, explains why he's so excited about his innovative design for small modular fission reactors -- and why it could be the next big step in solving the global energy crisis.


I found this video on you tube and thought I'd share it here. Hopefully some big company doesn't buy him out and suppress his ideas.

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[kristopher]

1. More of the latest nuclear industry hype.

Small modular reactors aren't new and they are even less cost effective than their larger kin.

[FBaggins]

12. That's a remarkably simplistic notion of "cost effective".

It's like saying that there's no point in building small school buses because the large ones are always cheaper per seat.

Small modular reactors aren't new

Another simplistic understanding. It's a reactor...and it's smaller... therefore it's no different from other small reactors.

When you're ready to move beyond the grammar stage... you just let us know.

[dipsydoodle]

2. David Hahn did similar

using parts from his local hardware store back in 1994. Didn't go down too well at the time.

David Charles Hahn (born October 30, 1976), also called the "Radioactive Boy Scout" or the "Nuclear Boy Scout", is an American who attempted to build a homemade breeder nuclear reactor in 1994, at age 17. A scout in the Boy Scouts of America, Hahn conducted his experiments in secret in a backyard shed at his mother's house in Commerce Township, Michigan. While his reactor never reached critical mass, Hahn attracted the attention of local police who found radioactive materials in the trunk of his car. His mother's property was cleaned up by the Environmental Protection Agency ten months later as a Superfund cleanup site. Hahn attained Eagle Scout rank in the Boy Scouts of America shortly after his reactor was dismantled.[1]

While the incident was not widely publicized initially, it became better known following a 1998 Harper's article by journalist Ken Silverstein. Hahn is also the eponymous subject of Silverstein's 2004 book, The Radioactive Boy Scout.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn

[bananas]

4. Mugshot when David Hahn was arrested in 2007

It used to be on wikipedia, for some reason they removed it.
http://blogs.kansascity.com/crime_scene/2007/08/meet-david-hahn.html

[Javaman]

8. That was a really interesting book. nt

[DetlefK]

3. Clearly he has not thought this through.

1. Radioactive material buried underground. What happens if there's a crack and radioactive material seeps into the ground-water?

2. "What are we doing with all the waste? (excess nuclear material)" Excellent question: What are we doing with the radioactive waste all those little reactors create?

3. 600-700°C? A handful of Plutonium gets about lukewarm due to natural radioactivity. It takes several rods of Uranium to heat water to boiling-point. How much radioactive material is he stuffing inside this reactor???

4. Heat-exchange runs by a gas that's at atmosphere-pressure AND at high temperature. But the reactor is cold when it starts, so he has to vent radioactive gas during initialization, because otherwise the pressure would rise above atmosphere-level.

5. "You can put those reactors anywhere you want to." Except maybe in populated areas or in countries where extremists would pillage such a reactor to make dirty bombs.

6. His reactor could power a space-ship or Mars-colony. For 30 years! And what could go wrong when shooting radioactive fuel around in rockets? (His counter-example with thermoelectric plutonium-batteries is bullshit, because his method needs way more radioactive material than just a fist-sized lump.)

[freethought]

5. Molten salt reactors are not a new idea

Okay, I'll say it. I am not against nuclear power but certain issues with it make it a bad choice. It's cost, safety issues, and waste problems don't go away. These molten salt reactors are not new, a small one (7-8 megawatts) was tested and used at Oak Ridge for years but for whatever reason the design was never adopted for widespread use. He's just talking about putting some modern day innovations onto something we already know how to do.

Pros:
Reactors can be assembly line manufactured, in other words" lower cost.
Reactors can be placed underground, a great advantage in preventing terrorist interference
Virtually zero chance of "China Syndrome" style meltdown
Higher efficiency
Engineering can be tweaked so that the reactor can consume weapons grade fuel, or the nuclear waste being held at currently operating nuclear plants.
Does not need refueling for 30 years ( I didn't see that one coming).

I think this fellows ideas have merit. I'm all for wind and PV solar but we need other options as well.
I do see a problem with public perception, chances are they won't know the difference between this type of reactor and the reactors at 3 Mile Island.

[kristopher]

6. No, we don't "need other options"

The portfolio of renewable energy technologies that we have available is able to meet our needs completely. There is no need at all to build more nuclear plants of any kind.

As for the idea that small modular reactors can achieve cost savings by "mass production" that is simply not true. There is a reason reactors are large and that is because it is less expensive to build larger than it is to replicate all the systems involved many times over.

These reactors do not solve any of the major problems of nuclear; instead they bring with them a set of new issues related to unproven new technologies. Many of the materials issues with them related to the "modern day innovations" are still not worked out.

Let's say we do decide to pursue this avenue with vigor - we have a climate crisis right now, how long do you think we should test before we turn the various companies loose to start building the tens of thousands of these that would be required to make a dent in GHG emissions?

Twenty years? Thirty?

Let me repeat the most important point of this post - we KNOW that a portfolio of renewables can provide all of the power we need to run a modern society. That isn't hopeful speculation, it is science.

And this matters a lot also:



Or as this write-up highlights: "Nuclear power – very unpopular"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/112742598

Do you know Why the Germans decided to move to renewables? It wasn't primarily climate change...

[wtmusic]

9. MSRs were never adopted for widespread use for several reasons, among them

1) The possibility and effects of a large-scale meltdown were underestimated
2) Fast-breeder reactors were thought necessary for developing bomb materiel (before significant deposits of natural uranium were discovered). Alvin Weinberg was director of Oak Ridge during the original Molten Salt Reactor Experiment, and a proponent of MSR technology:

"Weinberg was fired by the Nixon administration from ORNL in 1973 after 18 years as the lab's director because he continued to advocate increased nuclear safety and molten salt reactors, instead of the Administration's chosen Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor (LMFBR) that the AEC's Director of Reactor Division, Milton Shaw, was appointed to develop. Weinberg's firing effectively halted development of the MSR, as it was virtually unknown by other nuclear labs and specialists. There was a brief revival of MSR research at ORNL as part of the Carter Administration's nonproliferation interests, culminating in ORNL-TM-7207: 1980–07, "Conceptual Design Characteristics of a Denatured Molten-Salt Reactor with Once-Through Fueling", by Engel, et al. It is still considered by many to be the "reference design" for widespread, commercial molten salt reactors (MSRs)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Weinberg

Short version is that we were more interested in blowing people up than providing them with safe power.

onedit: a lot of the problems do go away:
Disposal: 1/100 the volume of nuclear waste, which is dangerous for 300 years instead of 10 million years
Costs: unknown because of technical issues to be resolved (mostly material durability) but likely far less expensive than solid-fuel reactors due to fuel cost savings alone. Thorium is as abundant in the Earth's crust as lead.
Safety: effective passive design. If fuel gets too hot it melts a plug at the bottom of the reactor and drains out into separated holding tanks, stopping the reaction.

[cprise]

7. Perfect justification for expanding the police state

Dozens of well-off neighbourhoods frightened that a terrorist is going to turn their reactor into a 'dirty bomb'. That buzzword was the first one that came up after the marathon bombing, even before 'pressure cooker', and it took days for its use to subside.

IMHO, this kid might as well have been born yesterday, picked up by the nuclear industry for their PR.

[wtmusic]

10. Agree, in part.

IMO spreading dangerous material around to thousands of locations is not a wise move, any way you slice it.

[cprise]

11. It would keep all his pals in the anti-terrorism business busy

Some day this sweet, doe-eyed little monster with the self awareness of a cucumber will look in the mirror and see something very unsavory.

[wtmusic]

13. doe-eyed little monster

[FogerRox]

14. What Taylor built is called a fusor. There are more than 60 people who have built fusors

Some of them teenagers. Possibly the most noted is Andrew Seltzman in Georgia, now at the Univ of Wisconsin at Madison.