Reply To: turn heat into electricity

[Maya]

vansig wrote: you elide heavy with extreme; it is incorrect.

as an analogy, notice that as you inflate a rubber balloon, the pressure inside it falls.

smaller is better

Well, you may be right, but I don’t think so. I mean, in principle, sure it would be better. But in reality I don’t know how you could (economically) build one that is small and at the same time so massive. And I don’t think I have to rely on Ivory Towers to tell me that. If you just look at the Coulomb force, the pressures seen at ITER, etc. it is clear that as power goes up pressure gets unmanageable. Thus more and more mass is needed. If someone could convince me of another route, and there is _one_ I know of, then I’d be persuaded.

So, yea, the neutron flux would be small in a small reactor, but how do you get there? And even then, 1 megawatt of neutron flux will still cause embrittlement and other issues, so I don’t think there will be a “green” or other valuable advantage to offset this bigger cost, at least not as far as the mega-corporations are concerned that would be building these things. All they care about is margin.