The thing your leaving out here is, after the MASSIVE initial cost to buy the damn thing, To run the thing it still works out to 40c/kwH for electricity.
40c was a typo. It's 5c.
Why not spend all that money you would be wasting on your mini nuclear generator, and run a power line from the nearest hydro company
Why waste all the money on infrastructure when it can be generated locally. Also, not all alternative energy sources are as stable as hydro (i.e. solar goes out at night). Also, what are the impacts of the dam?
Its not the bomb factor, its the unregulated nuclear waste. How many of the people running these things are gonna actually spend the money to dispose of the nuclear waste properly?
They run on Lithium-6 A nuclear Isotope used for weapons, so anyone who wants to make a nuclear dirty bomb can just order a refill for his "nuclear generator"
You make it sound like refills will be down at the supermarket with the razor blades. I would imagine that since they need to be recharged once per 40 years it would be feasible to send out even some armed guards with the maintenance crews. You can't imagine they will let you work on your own nuclear reactor.
There is a big difference between nuclear material and weapons grade material. This is why it's such a bid deal for arab countries trying to get nuclear refining technology right now, they could make weapons with it. The point being, this isn't something that you can do in your back yard.
Im sure they could find a use for the things, but just think about how many hundreds of Billions of dollars went into designing this thing. What if someone spent all that money designing better solar panels, or wind generators, something that actaully usefull here and now.
Or invest money making some of the current solar/wind gernerators cheaper, and more accessable to regular people.
New ideas are not always the answer, sometimes we just need go look back and make some of our old ideas better.
I think that negative attitudes about nuclear have really hurt us. The initial plants had faults. Now it's safe. France gets 87.5% of it's power from nuclear. Instead we are burning coal here that puts pollution into the air that we all breath. This is a technology that could solve our problems right now. And it's been around long enough to be cheap.
Solar/wind/tides/etc are all great. I've lived more of my life on solar power than on the grid. However, this was not by choice, but due to location. If grid power had been available, I would have taken it immediately. They all require some type of energy storage which is where things get difficult. Something that constantly generates enough power is much better.
They are using a remote community in Alaska as the test site for a 10mw version of these. Check it out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galena_Nuclear_Power_Plant
If you go to toshiba's presentation about it they talk about the 100's of millions of barrels of diesel that are burned in remote places for power. For example, the ice for the fishing industry in Alaska costs more than the product. Why burn all those fossil fuels when you could have a mini-nuke onsite. If you read about them the nuke part is in a secure bunker way underground. All that comes above ground is steam to drive a turbine.
