You force a reactor design direction by regulation and buying decisions. If the NRC finds the Cat-E to be unsuitable for home use because of its nuclear nature, then the big utilities are in the driver’s seat.
The use of steam makes centralized large scale power production economically attractive because most of the cost of a reactor is located in the turboelectric power generator. The heat plant is just a small part of the total cost. Big turbines cost less per unit of power produced than small ones. The weakness in the Rossi reactor is that it uses steam to produce power. If it used supercritical Co2 or direct heat to power energy conversion, then that would be another story. On Thu, Apr 28, 2011 at 4:52 PM, Jed Rothwell <[email protected]> wrote: > Axil Axil <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> > >> Like what has been done with fission, the electric utility industry will >> force Rossi into building a 20 Gigawatt Cat-E for “economy of scale” >> reasons. >> > > How will the electric utility industry "force him" to do anything?! He will > be selling reactors and generators to factories and later to individuals. > The power companies will have no say in the matter. We will not need them. > They will go out of business, along with gas stations and OPEC. > > In Japan and the U.S. there is now a tremendous amount of privately owned > generator capacity, mainly natural gas co-generators, for example in large > buildings in Tokyo, and in factory complexes. The power companies cannot > stop this. > > Actually, the power companies buy a significant share of their power from > privately owned excess capacity. They act as brokers. > > In another forum, Vasudev Godbole has been saying Rossi should only sell > huge, centralized generators: > > "Rossi device makes sense only if it is used to produce electricity. And as > I argued earlier - centralized (> 50 or 150 MW Thermal) and not > decentralized. Nuclear active devices must be highly localized and confined > to a small well-supervised space and not scattered all over the landscape. > Human beings are generally not reliable in decentralized matters, esp. > nuclear. Some central control has proved to be necessary - better do it > right from the beginning." > > I disagree. > > I discussed this issue in my book. > > - Jed > >
