Environmental Talk

The key was figuring out the flux capacitator….

While politicians in the U.S. continue to bloviate about energy supplies, carbon credits and ethanol, the folks at Toshiba are quietly working on a practical alternative to fossil fuels.

As you might expect from a Japanese company, the new technology is better-designed and smaller than any current options.

It turns out that “Toshiba and the Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry (CRIEPI) are jointly developing a new class of micro size Nuclear Reactors that are designed to power large apartment buildings or small city sections.”

One public relations suggestion, though. If you’re involved in developing nuclear power, it’s probably not a good idea for the acronym for your government agency to sound like “creepy.”

There are a bunch of cool features about this new breed of nuclear reactor.

First, it’s only about 20 feet long by 6 feet wide which makes it larger than my first apartment in New York City. I’m guessing here … but I’ll bet it has fewer cockroaches, too.

But wait, won’t there be opposition to nuclear power from people who saw the China Syndrome and watch The Simpsons?

Probably.

But just like they did with cars, the Japanese have addressed those issues. According to early reports, the reactor “is engineered to be fail-safe [ooh, excellent] and totally automatic [Homer still has a job] and will not overheat.[suh-weet!] Unlike traditional nuclear reactors the new micro reactor uses no control rods to initiate the reaction. The whole whole process is self sustaining and can last for up to 30 years without refueling, producing electricity for only 5 cents per kilowatt hour, about half the cost of grid energy.”

Game, set and match to the new iNuke.

Now if they can make it in a bunch of hot colors other than industrial gray, this thing will really take off.

Learning to love nuclear power will, no doubt, be a stretch for some people. The size of the reactor means “even a group of neighbors who are fed up with the power companies and want more control over their energy needs” could chip in and install one of these things in somebody’s garage and power the whole suburb.

How cool would that be? I’d pay good money just to see the town zoning board meeting when somebody says they want to put a nuclear reactor where their above ground pool used to be.

Being a real estate agent trying to sell one of the other homes on the cul-de-sac just got a little tougher, though.

The walk-through could end up being very quick…

Prospective homeowner: That’s kind of a big tool shed in the next yard, isn’t it?

Agent: Oh, that’s not a tool shed, that’s a nuclear reactor…. Uh, wait…don’t you want to see the finished basement…?

The commercialization of micro-nuclear technology is still a few years off (Toshiba is shooting for 2010), but it looks like there’s a lot of promise.

And, you have to admit, a “Hello, Kitty” nuclear reactor would be kinda cute…..

Cute as a nuclear button…

global warming, climate change, flux capacitator, nuclear power, Hello Kitty, Homer Simpson, town board meeting, Century 21