DIY miniature nuclear reactor. Peaceful atom in every home - miniature nuclear reactors for everyone

V Lately the concept of autonomous power supply is getting more and more development. Whether it is a country house with its windmills and solar panels on the roof, or a woodworking plant with a heating boiler that runs on sawdust, the essence does not change. The world is gradually coming to the conclusion that it is time to abandon the centralized provision of heat and electricity. Central heating is almost non-existent in Europe, individual houses, multi-apartment skyscrapers and industrial enterprises heated independently. The exception is perhaps some cities in the northern countries - there centralized heating and large boiler houses are justified by climatic conditions.

As for the autonomous electric power industry, everything is moving towards this - the population is actively buying up windmills and solar panels. Businesses are looking for ways rational use thermal energy from technological processes, build their own thermal power plants and also buy solar panels with windmills. Particularly turned on "green" technologies, they even plan to cover the roofs of factory floors and hangars with solar panels.

Ultimately, this turns out to be cheaper than buying the necessary energy capacity from local power grids. However, after the Chernobyl accident, everyone somehow forgot that the most environmentally friendly, cheap and accessible way obtaining thermal and electrical energy still remains the energy of the atom. And if throughout the existence of the nuclear industry, power plants with nuclear reactors have always been associated with complexes per hectare of area, huge pipes and lakes for cooling, then a number of developments recent years designed to break these stereotypes.

Several companies announced at once that they were entering the market with "home" nuclear reactors. Miniature stations ranging in size from a garage box to a small two-story building are ready to supply from 10 to 100 MW for 10 years without refueling. The reactors are completely self-contained, safe, do not require maintenance, and after the expiration of their service life, they are simply recharged for another 10 years. Why not a dream for a factory for the production of irons or an economic summer resident? Let us consider in more detail those of them, the sale of which will begin in the coming years.

Toshiba 4S (Super Safe, Small and Simple)

The reactor is designed like a battery. It is assumed that such a "battery" will be buried in a mine 30 meters deep, and the building above it will have dimensions of 22 16 11 meters. Not much more than a good country house? Such a station will need maintenance personnel, but this still does not compare with tens of thousands of square meters of area and hundreds of workers at traditional nuclear power plants. The rated power of the complex is 10 megawatts for 30 years without refueling.

The reactor runs on fast neutrons. A similar reactor has been installed and has been operating since 1980 at the Beloyarsk NPP in Sverdlovsk region Russia (BN-600 reactor). The principle of operation is described. In the Japanese installation, sodium melt is used as a coolant. This allows you to work to raise the temperature of the reactor by 200 degrees Celsius compared to water and at normal pressure. The use of water in this capacity would increase the pressure in the system hundreds of times.

Most importantly, the cost of generating 1 kWh for this plant is expected to be between 5 and 13 cents. The variation is due to the peculiarities of national taxation, different costs of processing nuclear waste and the cost of introducing into decommissioning the plant itself.

Toshiba's first customer for the battery seems to be the small town of Galena, Alaska, in the US. Permits are currently being negotiated with US government agencies. The company's partner in the United States is the well-known company Westinghouse, which for the first time supplied fuel assemblies alternative to Russian TVELs at the Ukrainian nuclear power plant.

Hyperion Power Generation and Hyperion Reactor

These American guys seem to be the first to enter the commercial market for miniature nuclear reactors. The company offers units ranging from 70 to 25 megawatts for about $25-30 million apiece. Hyperion nuclear plants can be used for both electricity generation and heating. As of the beginning of 2010, more than 100 orders have already been received for stations of various capacities, both from private individuals and state-owned companies. It is even planned to move the production of finished modules outside the United States by building factories in Asia and Western Europe.

The reactor operates on the same principle as most modern reactors in nuclear power plants. Read . The closest in principle of operation are the most common Russian reactors of the VVER and power plants used on nuclear submarines of project 705 "Lira" (NATO - "Alfa"). The American reactor is practically a land-based version of the reactors installed on these nuclear submarines, by the way - the fastest submarines of his time.

The fuel used is uranium nitride, which has a higher thermal conductivity compared to traditional ceramic uranium oxide for VVER reactors. This allows you to work at a temperature 250-300 degrees Celsius higher than water-water installations, which increases work efficiency. steam turbines electric generators. Everything is simple here - the higher the reactor temperature, the higher the steam temperature and, as a result, the higher the efficiency of the steam turbine.

Lead-bismuth melt is used as a coolant "liquid", similar to that on Soviet nuclear submarines. The melt passes through three heat exchange circuits, reducing the temperature from 500 degrees Celsius to 480. Both steam and superheated carbon dioxide can serve as a working fluid for the turbine.

The plant with fuel and cooling system has a mass of only 20 tons and is designed for 10 years of operation at a rated power of 70 megawatts without refueling. The miniature dimensions are really impressive - the reactor is only 2.5 meters high and 1.5 meters wide! The whole system can be transported by trucks or by rail, being the absolute commercial world record holder in terms of power-to-mobility ratio.

Upon arrival at the site, the “barrel” with the reactor is simply buried. Access to it or any maintenance is not expected at all. At the end of the warranty period, the assembly is dug up and sent to the manufacturer's factory for refilling. Features of lead-bismuth cooling give a huge safety advantage - overheating and explosion are not possible (pressure does not increase with temperature). Also, when cooled, the alloy solidifies, and the reactor itself turns into an iron ingot insulated with a thick layer of lead, which is not afraid of mechanical influences. By the way, it was the impossibility of working at low power (due to the freezing of the cooling alloy and automatic shutdown) that was the reason for the refusal to further use lead-bismuth installations on nuclear submarines. For the same reason, these are the safest reactors ever installed on nuclear submarines of all countries.

Initially, miniature nuclear power plants were developed by Hyperion Power Generation for the needs of the mining industry, namely for processing oil shale into synthetic oil. Estimated reserves of synthetic oil in oil shale, available for processing by currently available technologies, are estimated at 2.8-3.3 trillion barrels. For comparison, the reserves of "liquid" oil in the wells are estimated at only 1.2 trillion barrels. However, the process of converting shale into oil requires heating it and then capturing the vapors, which then condense into oil and by-products. It is clear that for heating you need to take energy somewhere. For this reason, oil production from shale is considered economically unviable compared to its import from OPEC countries. So the company sees the future of its product in different areas applications.

For example, as a mobile power plant for the needs of military bases and airfields. There are also interesting perspectives here. Thus, in the conduct of mobile combat operations, when troops operate from so-called strongholds in certain regions, these stations could feed the infrastructure of the “bases”. Just like in computer strategies. The only difference is that when the task in the region is completed, the power plant is loaded into vehicle(airplane, cargo helicopter, trucks, train, ship) and taken to a new place.

Another application in the military sphere is the stationary power supply of permanent military bases and airfields. In the event of an air raid or missile attack, a base with an underground nuclear power plant that does not require maintenance personnel is more likely to remain combat-ready. In the same way, it is possible to feed groups of social infrastructure objects - water supply systems for cities, administrative facilities, hospitals.

Well, industrial and civil applications - power supply systems for small towns and villages, individual enterprises or their groups, heating systems. After all, these installations primarily generate thermal energy and in the cold regions of the planet can form the core centralized systems heating. The company also considers the use of such mobile power plants at desalination plants in developing countries as promising.

SSTAR (small, sealed, transportable, autonomous reactor)

A small, sealed, mobile autonomous reactor is a project under development at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, USA. By the principle of operation it is similar to Hyperion, only it uses Uranium-235 as fuel. Should have a shelf life of 30 years at a power of 10 to 100 megawatts.

The dimensions should be 15 meters high and 3 meters wide with a reactor weight of 200 tons. This installation is initially calculated for use in underdeveloped countries under the leasing scheme. Thus, increased attention is paid to the inability to disassemble the structure and extract anything of value from it. Valuable is uranium-238 and weapons-grade plutonium, which are produced as they expire.

At the end of the lease agreement, the recipient will have to return this unit to the United States. Only it seems to me that these are mobile plants for the production of weapons-grade plutonium for other people's money? 🙂 In other words, the American state has not progressed further than research work here, so far there is not even a prototype.

Summing up, it should be noted that so far the most realistic development is from Hyperion and the first deliveries are scheduled for 2014. I think we can expect a further offensive of "pocket" nuclear power plants, especially since other enterprises, including such giants as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, are carrying out similar work on the creation of such plants. In general, a miniature nuclear reactor is a worthy answer to all sorts of tidal turbidity and other incredibly "green" technologies. It seems that in the near future we will be able to observe how again military technologies are being transferred to civilian service.

Do you know what your son does in the evenings? Then when he says he went to the disco, or went fishing, or went on a date? No, I am far from thinking that he is injecting himself, or drinking port wine with his friends, or robbing belated passers-by, all this would be too noticeable. But who knows, maybe he is assembling a nuclear reactor in a shed...

At the entrance to the town of Golf Manor, which is 25 km from Detroit, Michigan, hangs big poster, on which it is written in yard letters: "We have a lot of children, but we save them anyway, therefore, driver, move more carefully." The warning is absolutely superfluous, since strangers appear here extremely rarely, and the locals don’t drive much anyway: you can’t really accelerate at one and a half kilometers, and this is exactly the length of the central street of the city.

Of course, the EPA was on sound grounds when they planned to start clearing the backyard of Mr. Michael Polasek and Mrs. Patti Hahn's private property at 1:00 am. At such a late hour, the inhabitants of a provincial town had to sleep, and therefore it was possible to dismantle and remove Mrs. Khan's barn with all its contents without causing unnecessary questions and without creating a panic that is usually cast on civilian population containers with the icon: "Beware of radiation!" But there are exceptions to every rule. This time it was Mrs. Hahn's neighbor, Dottie Peas. Having driven her car into the garage, she went out into the street and saw that in the courtyard opposite, eleven people dressed in silvery radiation-protective space suits were swarming around.

Excited, Dottie woke her husband up and made him go to the workers and find out what they were doing there. The man found the elder and demanded an explanation from him, in response to which he heard that there was no reason to worry, that the situation was under control, the radiation contamination was small and did not pose a danger to life.

In the morning, the workers loaded the last blocks of the barn into containers, removed the top layer of soil, loaded all their goods onto trucks and left the scene. When questioned by neighbors, Mrs. Khan and Mr. Polasek said that they themselves did not know what caused such interest in their barn from the EPA. Gradually, life in the city returned to normal, and if it weren’t for meticulous journalists, perhaps no one would ever have known why Patty Khan’s barn was so annoying to EPA employees.

Until the age of ten, David Khan grew up as an ordinary American teenager. His parents, Ken and Patti Khan, were divorced, David lived with his father and his new wife, Kathy Missing, near Golf Manor, in the town of Clinton. On weekends, David went to Golf Manor to visit his mother. She had her own problems: her new chosen one drank heavily, and therefore she was not particularly up to her son. Perhaps the only person who managed to understand the soul of a teenager was his step-grandfather, Kathy's father, who gave the young boy scout a thick "Golden Book of Chemical Experiments" for his tenth anniversary.

The book was written plain language, it explained in an accessible form how to equip a home laboratory, how to make rayon, how to get alcohol, and so on. David was so carried away by chemistry that two years later he began to study his father's college textbooks.

Parents were happy with their son's new hobby. In the meantime, David had set up a very decent chemistry lab in his bedroom. The boy grew up, experiments became bolder, at the age of thirteen he was already freely making gunpowder, and at fourteen he had grown to nitroglycerin.

Fortunately, David himself was almost unharmed during experiments with the latter. But the bedroom was almost completely destroyed: the windows flew out, the built-in wardrobe was dented into the wall, the wallpaper and the ceiling were hopelessly damaged. As punishment, David was flogged by his father, and the laboratory, or rather what was left of it, had to be moved to the basement.

The boy then turned around. Here no one controlled him anymore, here he could break, blow up and destroy as much as his chemical soul required. There was no longer enough pocket money for experiments, and the boy began to earn money himself. He washed dishes in a bistro, worked in a warehouse, in a grocery store.

Meanwhile, explosions in the basement occurred more and more often, and their power grew. In the name of saving the house from destruction, David was given an ultimatum: either he moves on to less dangerous experiments, or his basement laboratory will be destroyed. The threat worked, and the family lived a quiet life for a month. Until one late evening the house was shaken by a powerful explosion. Ken rushed to the basement, where he found his son lying unconscious with scorched eyebrows. A briquette of red phosphorus exploded, which David was trying to crush with a screwdriver. From that moment on, any experiments within the limits of his father's property were strictly prohibited. However, David still had a spare laboratory set up in his mother's barn at Golf Manor. It was there that the main events unfolded.

Now David's father says that Boy Scouting and his son's exorbitant ambition are to blame for everything. He wanted at all costs to receive the highest distinction - the Boy Scout Eagle. However, for this, according to the rules, it was necessary to earn 21 special distinctions, eleven of which are given for compulsory skills (the ability to provide first aid, knowledge of the basic laws of the community, the ability to make a fire without matches, and so on), and ten for achievements in any areas chosen by the scout himself.

On May 10, 1991, fourteen-year-old David Hahn handed over to his scoutmaster, Joe Auito, a pamphlet he had written for his next honors badge on nuclear energy. In preparing it, David sought help from the Westinghouse Electric Company and the American Nuclear Society, the Edison Electrical Institute, and companies involved in the management of nuclear power plants. And everywhere I met the warmest understanding and sincere support. Attached to the brochure was a model of a nuclear reactor made from an aluminum beer can, a clothes hanger, baking soda, kitchen matches, and three trash bags. However, all this seemed too small for the boiling soul of a young boy scout with pronounced nuclear inclinations, and therefore he chose the construction of a real, only small, nuclear reactor as the next stage of his work.

Fifteen-year-old David decided to start by building a reactor that converts uranium-235 into uranium-236. To do this, he needed very little, namely, to extract a certain amount of uranium 235 proper. To begin with, the boy made a list of organizations that could help him in his endeavors. It included the Department of Energy, the American Nuclear Society, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Edison Electrical Institute, the Atomic Industrial Forum, and so on. David wrote twenty letters a day, in which, posing as a physics teacher from high school in Chippewa Valley, asked for information assistance. In response, he received just tons of information. However, most of it was completely useless. So, the organization on which the boy had the highest hopes, the American Nuclear Society, sent him the comic book "Goin. The fission reaction", in which Albert Einstein said: "I am Albert. Und today we will carry out the nuclear fission reaction. Ich not have I mean the core of a cannon, ich talking about the core of an atom..."

However, this list also included organizations that rendered truly invaluable services to the young nuclear scientist. Donald Erb, head of the department for the production and distribution of radioisotopes of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, immediately took a deep liking to "Professor" Khan and entered into a lengthy scientific correspondence with him. Quite a lot of information "teacher" Khan received from the usual press, which he filled up with questions like: "Tell me, please, how is such and such a substance produced?"

Already after less than three months, David had at his disposal a list of 14 necessary isotopes. It took another month to figure out where these isotopes could be found. As it turned out, americium-241 was used in smoke detectors, radium-226 in old clocks with luminous hands, uranium-235 in black ore, and thorium-232 in gas lantern dividers.

David decided to start with americium. He stole the first smoke detectors at night from the ward of the Boy Scout camp at a time when the rest of the boys went to visit the girls who lived nearby. However, there were very few ten sensors for the future reactor, and David entered into correspondence with manufacturing companies, one of which agreed to sell one hundred defective devices for laboratory work to the persistent "teacher" at a price of $ 1 each.

It was not enough to get the sensors, it was also necessary to understand where they have americium there. In order to get an answer to this question, David contacted another firm and, introducing himself as the director of a construction company, said that he would like to conclude a contract for the supply of a large batch of sensors, but he was told that a radioactive element was used in its production, and now he afraid that the radiation will "leak" out. In response to this, a nice girl from the customer service department said that, yes, there is a radioactive element in the sensors, but "... there is no reason for alarm, since each element is packed in a special gold shell that is resistant to corrosion and damage" .

David placed the americium extracted from the sensors in a lead case with a tiny hole in one of the walls. As conceived by the creator, alpha rays, which are one of the decay products of americium-241, should have come out of this hole. Alpha rays, as you know, are a stream of neutrons and protons. To filter out the latter, David placed a sheet of aluminum in front of the hole. The aluminum now absorbed the protons and produced a relatively pure neutron beam at the output.

For further work, he needed uranium-235. At first, the boy decided to find it on his own. He walked with a Geiger counter in his hands all around the surrounding area, hoping to find anything resembling black ore, but the biggest thing he managed to find was an empty container in which this ore was once transported. And the young man took up his pen again.

This time he contacted representatives of a Czech firm that sold small quantities of uranium-containing materials. The firm immediately sent the "professor" several samples of black ore. David immediately crushed the samples into dust, which he then dissolved in nitric acid, hoping to isolate pure uranium. David passed the resulting solution through a coffee filter, hoping that pieces of undissolved ore would settle in his bowels, while uranium would pass through it freely. But then he was terribly disappointed: as it turned out, he somewhat overestimated the ability of nitric acid to dissolve uranium, and all the necessary metal remained in the filter. What to do next, the boy did not know.

However, he did not despair and decided to try his luck with thorium-232, which he later planned to turn into uranium-233 using the same neutron gun. At a discount store, he bought about a thousand lamp nets, which he burnt into ashes with a blowtorch. Then he bought a thousand dollars worth of lithium batteries, extracted lithium from them with wire cutters, mixed it with ash and heated it in the flame of a blowtorch. As a result, lithium took oxygen from the ash, and David received thorium, the level of purification of which is

9000 times the level of its content in natural ores and 170 times the level that required licensing from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Now all that remained was to direct the neutron beam at thorium and wait for it to turn into uranium.

However, here a new disappointment awaited David: the power of his "neutron gun" was clearly not enough. In order to increase the "combat capability" of the weapon, it was necessary to pick up a worthy replacement for americium. For example, radium.

With him, everything was somewhat simpler: until the end of the 60s, clock hands, automobile and aircraft instruments, and other things were covered with luminous radium paint. And David went on an expedition to car junkyards and antique shops. As soon as he managed to find something luminescent, he immediately acquired this thing, since the old watch did not cost much, and carefully scraped off the paint from them into a special vial. The work was extremely slow and could have dragged on for many months if David had not been helped by chance. Once, driving his old Pontiac 6000 along the street of his native town, he noticed that the Geiger counter he had mounted on the dashboard suddenly became agitated and squealed. A brief search for the source of the radioactive signal led him to Mrs. Gloria Genett's antique shop. Here he found an old watch, in which the entire dial was painted over with radium paint. After paying $10, the young man took the watch home, where he opened it. The results exceeded all expectations: in addition to the painted dial, he found a full bottle of radium paint hidden behind the back of the watch, apparently left there by an forgetful watchmaker.

In order to obtain pure radium, David used barium sulfate. Having mixed barium and paint, he melted the resulting composition, and again passed the melt through a coffee filter. This time, David succeeded: the barium absorbed impurities and got stuck in the filter, while the radium passed through it unhindered.

As before, David placed the radium in a lead container with a microscopic hole, only in the path of the beam, on the advice of his old friend from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Dr. Erb, he placed not an aluminum plate, but a beryllium screen stolen from school office chemistry. He directed the resulting neutron beam to thorium and uranium powder. However, if the radioactivity of thorium gradually began to grow, then uranium remained unchanged.

And then Dr. Erb came to the aid of the sixteen-year-old "professor" Khan again. “There is nothing surprising that nothing happens in your case,” he explained the situation to the false teacher. “The neutron beam you described is too fast for uranium. In such cases, water, deuterium or, say, tritium filters are used to slow it down.” In principle, David could use water, but he considered this a compromise and took a different path. Using the press, he found out that tritium is used in the manufacture of luminous sights for sporting rifles, bows and crossbows. Further, his actions were simple: the young man bought bows and crossbows in sports shops, cleaned off the tritium paint from them, applying ordinary phosphorus instead, and handed over the goods back. He processed the beryllium screen with the collected tritium and again directed the neutron flux to the uranium powder, the level of radiation of which increased significantly after a week.

It was the turn of the creation of the reactor itself. As a basis, the scout took a model of the reactor used to obtain weapons-grade plutonium. David, who by that time was already seventeen, decided to use the accumulated material. With no concern for safety at all, he extracted americium and radium from his guns, mixed them with aluminum and beryllium powder, and wrapped the "hellish mixture" in aluminum foil. What until recently was a neutron weapon has now turned into the nucleus for an improvised reactor. He overlaid the resulting ball with alternating cubes wrapped in foil with thorium ash and uranium powder, and wrapped the entire structure on top with a thick layer of adhesive tape.

Of course, the "reactor" was far from what can be considered an "industrial design". It did not give any tangible heat, but its radiation radiation grew by leaps and bounds. Soon the radiation levels rose so much that David's meter began to crackle alarmingly already five blocks from his mother's house. Only then did the young man realize that he had collected too much radioactive material in one place and it was time to stop playing with such games.

He dismantled his reactor, put the thorium and uranium in a tool box, left the radium and americium in the basement, and decided to take all the related materials out in his Pontiac into the forest.

At 2:40 am on August 31, 1994, an unknown person called the Clinton police and said that someone, apparently, was trying to steal tires from someone's car. Turned out to be this "someone" David explained to the arriving policemen that he was just waiting for a friend. The policemen were not satisfied with the answer, and they asked the young man to open the trunk. There they found a lot of strange things: broken watches, wires, mercury switches, chemical reagents, and about fifty packages of an unknown powder wrapped in foil. But most attention the policemen were attracted by a locked box. When asked to open it, David replied that this could not be done, since the contents of the box were terribly radioactive.

Radiation, mercury switches, clockwork... Well, what other associations could cause these things in a police officer? At 3 am, information was sent to the county police office that a car with an explosive device, presumably a nuclear bomb, had been detained by local police in the city of Clinton, Michigan.

The sapper team that arrived the next morning, having inspected the car, reassured the local authorities, saying that the “explosive device” was not really such, but immediately shocked them with the message that a large amount of radiation hazardous materials had been found in the car.

During interrogations, David was stubbornly silent. Only at the end of November did he tell the investigation about the secrets of his mother's barn. All this time, David's father and mother, frightened by the thought that their houses could be confiscated by the police, were engaged in the destruction of evidence. The barn was cleared of any "garbage" and instantly filled with vegetables. Only the high level of radiation, more than 1000 times higher than the background level, now reminded of its former contents. Which was registered by representatives of the FBI who visited him on November 29. Nearly a year after David's arrest, EPA officials secured a court order to demolish the barn. Its dismantling and disposal at a radioactive waste dump in the Great Salt Lake area cost the parents of the "radioactive boy scout" $ 60,000.

After the destruction of the barn, David fell into a deep depression. All his work went down the drain, as they say. Members of his Boy Scout troop refused to give him Eagle, saying that his experiments were not at all useful to people. An atmosphere of suspicion and hostility reigned around him. Relations with parents after paying the fine deteriorated hopelessly. After David graduated from college, his father gave his son a new ultimatum: either he goes to serve in the Armed Forces, or he is kicked out of the house.


David Hahn is currently serving as a sergeant on nuclear aircraft carrier US Navy Enterprise. True, he is not allowed near a nuclear reactor, in memory of past merits and in order to avoid possible troubles. On the shelf in his cockpit are books on steroids, melanin, genetics, antioxidants, nuclear reactors, amino acids, and criminal law. "I'm sure that with my experiments I took no more than five years of my life," he says from time to time to journalists who visit him. "Therefore, I still have time to do something useful for people."

The tragedies at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and the Fukushima nuclear power plant have shaken the confidence of mankind that nuclear power future. Some of the countries, such as Germany, have come to the conclusion that nuclear power should be abandoned altogether. But the issue of using nuclear energy is very serious and does not tolerate extreme conclusions. Here it is necessary to clearly evaluate all the pros and cons, and rather - look for golden mean and alternative solutions for using the atom.

Organic minerals, oil, gas are used today as energy sources on Earth; renewable energy sources – sun, wind, wood fuel; hydropower - rivers and all kinds of reservoirs suitable for these purposes. But the reserves of oil and gas are depleted, and, accordingly, the energy received with their help is becoming more expensive. The energy obtained with the help of wind and sun is a rather costly pleasure, due to the high cost of solar and wind power plants. Possibilities of energy of reservoirs are also very limited. Therefore, many scientists still come to the conclusion that if Russia runs out of oil and gas, there are very few alternatives to abandoning nuclear energy as an energy source. It has been proven that the world's resources of nuclear fuel, such as plutonium and uranium, are many times greater natural reserves of fossil fuels. The work of nuclear power plants themselves has a number of advantages over other power plants. They can be built everywhere, regardless of the energy resources of the region, nuclear power plant fuel has a very high energy content, these plants do not emit harmful emissions into the atmosphere, such as toxic substances and greenhouse gases, and consistently provide the cheapest energy. Russia is in the world ranking in terms of thermal power plants lags far behind, and in terms of NPP indicators, we are among the first, so for our country, the rejection of nuclear energy can threaten a big economic disaster. Moreover, it is in Russia that certain issues in the development of nuclear energy are particularly relevant, such as the construction of mini-nuclear power plants. Why? Everything is clear and simple here.

The project of one of the ASMM - "Uniterm"

Nuclear reactors of low power (100-180 MW) have been successfully used in the navigation of our country for several decades. Recently, more and more often they begin to talk about the need to use them to provide energy to remote regions of Russia. Here, small nuclear power plants will be able to solve the problem of energy supply, which has always been acute in many hard-to-reach regions. Two-thirds of Russia is a zone of decentralized energy supply. First of all, it is the Far North and Far East. The standard of living here largely depends on energy supply. In addition, these regions are of great value due to the large concentration of minerals. Their production does not develop or often stops precisely because of the high cost in the energy and transport sectors. Energy here comes from autonomous sources using fossil fuels. And the delivery of such fuel to hard-to-reach areas is very expensive due to the huge volumes and long distances required. For example, in the Republic of Sakha in Yakutia, due to the fragmentation of the energy system into low-power isolated sections, the cost of electricity is 10 times higher than on the “mainland”. It is absolutely clear that for a large area with a low population density, the problem of energy development cannot be solved by large-scale network construction. Low-power nuclear power plants (LNPPs) are one of the most realistic ways out of the situation in this matter. Scientists have already counted 50 regions in Russia where such stations are needed. Of course, they will lose in terms of the cost of electricity to a large power unit (it is simply unprofitable to build it here), but they will benefit from a fossil fuel source. According to experts, ASMM can save up to 30% of the cost of electricity in hard-to-reach regions. Small amounts of fuel consumed, ease of movement, low labor costs for putting into operation, a minimum of maintenance personnel - these characteristics make SNMM indispensable energy sources in remote areas.

The indispensability of ASMM has long been recognized in many other countries of the world. The Japanese have proven that such stations will be very effective in megacities. The work of one separate such device is enough to supply energy to a certain number of residential buildings or skyscrapers. Small reactors do not need an expensive and sometimes non-existent location in a metropolis. Also, Japanese developers claim that these reactors can compensate for peak loads in large urban areas. The Japanese company Toshiba has been developing the ASMM project for a long time - Toshiba 4S. According to the developers' forecasts, its service life is 30 years without fuel reloading, power is 10 MW, dimensions are 22 by 16 by 11 meters, the fuel of such a mini-nuclear power plant is metal alloy plutonium, uranium and zirconium. This station does not require constant maintenance, but needs only occasional monitoring. The Japanese propose to use such a reactor in oil production, and they want to establish their serial production by 2020.

Do not lag behind Japan and American scientists. Within a few years, they promise to put on sale a small nuclear reactor that will provide energy to small villages. The power of such a station is 25 MW, it is a little larger than a dog kennel in size. This mini-nuclear power plant will generate electricity around the clock and its cost per 1 kilowatt-hour will be only 10 cents. Reliability is also at the highest level: in addition to the steel case, Hyperion is rolled into concrete. Only specialists can change nuclear fuel here, and this will have to be done every 5-7 years. The producing company Hyperion has already received a license to produce such nuclear reactors. The approximate cost of the station is $25 million. For a town with at least 10,000 houses, it's quite inexpensive.

As for Russia, they have been working on the creation of small nuclear power plants for a long time. Scientists of the Kurchatov Institute 30 years ago developed a mini-nuclear power plant "Elena", which does not need any maintenance personnel at all. Its prototype is still functioning on the territory of the institute. The electric power of the station is 100 kW. It is a cylinder weighing 168 tons, with a diameter of 4.5 and a height of 15 meters. "Elena" is installed in the mine at a depth of 15-25 meters and is closed with concrete ceilings. Its electricity will be enough to provide heat and light to a small village. In Russia, several more projects similar to Elena have been developed. All of them correspond necessary requirements reliability, security, inaccessibility to outsiders, non-proliferation of nuclear materials, etc., but require considerable construction work during installation and do not meet mobility criteria.

In the 60s, a small mobile station "TES-3" was tested. It consisted of four caterpillar self-propelled transporters placed on the reinforced base of the T-10 tank. A steam generator and a water reactor were placed on two conveyors, a turbine generator with an electrical part and a station control system were placed on the remaining ones. The power of such a station was -1.5 MW.

In the 80s, a small nuclear power plant on wheels was developed in Belarus. The station was named "Pamir" and put on the MAZ-537 "Hurricane" chassis. It consisted of four vans, which were connected by high-pressure gas hoses. The capacity of Pamir was 0.6 MW. The station was primarily designed to operate in a wide temperature range, which is why it was equipped with a gas-cooled reactor. But, the Chernobyl accident that happened just in these years, “automatically” destroyed the project.

All these stations had certain problems that prevented their widespread introduction into production. First, the inability to provide high-quality protection against radiation due to the large weight of the reactor and the limited carrying capacity of the transport. Secondly, these mini-nuclear power plants operated on highly enriched "weapon-grade" nuclear fuel, which was contrary to international norms that prohibited the spread of nuclear weapons. Thirdly, it was difficult for self-propelled nuclear power plants to create protection against traffic accidents and terrorists.

The entire range of requirements for NSMM was satisfied by a floating nuclear thermal power plant. It was laid down in St. Petersburg in 2009. This mini-nuclear power plant consists of two reactor plants on a smooth-deck non-self-propelled vessel. Its service life is 36 years, during which, every 12 years, it will be necessary to restart the reactors. The station can become an effective source of electricity and heat for hard-to-reach regions of the country. Another of its functions is the desalination of sea water. It can produce from 100 to 400 thousand tons per day. In 2011, the project received a positive opinion from the state environmental expertise. No later than 2016, a floating nuclear power plant is planned to be located in Chukotka. Rosatom expects large foreign orders from this project.

It also recently became known that one of the companies controlled by Oleg Deripaska, Eurosibenergo, together with Rosatom, announced the organization of the AKME-Engineering enterprise, which will work on the creation of ASMM and promote them on the market. In the operation of these stations, they want to use fast neutron reactors with a lead-bismuth coolant, which nuclear submarines were equipped with in Soviet times. They are designed to provide energy to remote areas that are not connected to the power grid. The organizers of the enterprise plan to get 10-15% of the world market of mini-nuclear power plants. The success of this campaign makes analysts doubt the declared cost of the plant, which, according to Eurosibenergo's forecasts, will be equal to the cost of a thermal power plant of the same capacity.

The success of small nuclear power plants in the global energy market is easy to predict. The need for their presence there is obvious. Issues with the improvement of these energy sources and bringing them into line with the necessary parameters are also being solved. Only the problem of cost remains global, which today is 2-3 times more than a 1000 MW nuclear power plant. But is such a comparison appropriate in this case? After all, ASMM has a completely different niche in use - they must provide autonomous consumers. None of us would think of comparing the cost of kilowatts consumed by a clock running on batteries and a microwave that is powered from an outlet.

I present to you an article on how to make a thermonuclear reactor their hands!

But first a few warnings:

This homemade uses life-threatening voltage during its work. To get started, make sure you are familiar with high voltage safety regulations or have a qualified electrician friend as an advisor.

The operation of the reactor will emit potentially dangerous levels of X-rays. Lead shielding of viewing windows is a must!

Deuterium that will be used in handicraft- explosive gas. Therefore, special attention should be paid to checking the tightness of the fuel compartment.

When working, follow the safety rules, do not forget to wear overalls and personal protective equipment.

List of required materials:

• vacuum chamber;
• forevacuum pump;
• Diffusion pump;
• High voltage power supply capable of delivering 40kV 10mA. Negative polarity must be present;
• High-voltage divider - probe, with the ability to connect to a digital multimeter;
• Thermocouple or baratron;
• Neutron radiation detector;
• Geiger counter;
• Deuterium gas;
• Large ballast resistor in the range of 50-100 kOhm and a length of about 30 cm;
• Camera and television display to monitor the situation inside the reactor;
• Lead coated glass;
• General tools (, etc.).

Step 1: Assembly of the vacuum chamber

The project will require the manufacture of a high quality vacuum chamber.

Purchase two stainless steel hemispheres, flanges for vacuum systems. Drill holes for the auxiliary flanges and then weld it all together. O-rings made of soft metal are located between the flanges. If you have never brewed before, it would be wise to have someone with experience do the job for you. Insofar as welds must be perfect and free of defects. Then carefully clean the camera of fingerprints. Because they will pollute the vacuum and it will be difficult to keep the plasma stable.

Step 2: Preparing the High Vacuum Pump

Install a diffusion pump. Fill it with high-quality oil to the required level (the oil level is indicated in the documentation), fix the outlet valve, which is then connected to the chamber (see diagram). Attach the foreline pump. High vacuum pumps are not capable of operating from the atmosphere.

Connect the water to cool the oil in the working chamber of the diffusion pump.

Once everything is assembled, turn on the foreline pump and wait until the volume is pumped out to the preliminary vacuum. Next, we prepare the high vacuum pump for launch by turning on the “boiler”. After it warms up (may take a while), the vacuum will drop rapidly.

Step 3: Whisk

The whisk will be connected to high voltage wires, which will enter the working volume through the bellows. It is best to use a tungsten filament, as it has a very high temperature melting, and will remain intact for many cycles.

From a tungsten filament, it is necessary to form a "spherical whisk" approximately 25-38 mm in diameter (for a working chamber with a diameter of 15-20 cm) for normal operation systems.

The electrodes to which the tungsten wire is attached must be rated for a voltage of about 40 kV.

Step 4: Installing the gas system

Deuterium is used as fuel for a fusion reactor. You will need to purchase a tank for this gas. The gas is extracted from heavy water by electrolysis using a small Hoffmann apparatus.

Attach the high pressure regulator directly to the tank, add the micrometering needle valve, and then attach it to the chamber. The ball valve should be installed between the regulator and the needle valve.

Step 5: High Voltage

If you can purchase a power supply suitable for use in a fusion reactor, then there should be no problem. Simply take the 40 kV negative output electrode and attach it to the chamber with a large 50-100 kΩ high voltage ballast resistor.

The problem is that it is often difficult (if not impossible) to find a suitable DC source with a current-voltage characteristic that would fully meet the stated requirements of an amateur scientist.

The photo shows a pair of high-frequency ferrite transformers, with a 4-stage multiplier (located behind them).

Step 6: Installing the Neutron Detector

Neutron radiation is a by-product of the fusion reaction. It can be fixed with three different devices.

bubble dosimeter a small gel device in which bubbles form during neutron ionization. The disadvantage is that it is an integrative detector that reports the total number of neutron emissions over the time that it was used (it is not possible to obtain data on the instantaneous neutron velocity). In addition, such detectors are quite difficult to buy.

active silver moderator [paraffin, water, etc.] located near the reactor becomes radioactive, emitting decent neutron fluxes. The process has a short half-life (only a few minutes), but if you put a Geiger counter next to silver, the result can be documented. The disadvantage of this method is that silver requires a fairly large neutron flux. In addition, the system is quite difficult to calibrate.

GammaMETER. The pipes can be filled with helium-3. They are like a Geiger counter. When neutrons pass through the tube, electrical impulses are registered. The tube is surrounded by 5 cm of "retardant material". This is the most accurate and useful neutron detection device, however, the cost of a new tube is prohibitive for most people, and they are extremely rare on the market.

Step 7: Start the Reactor

It's time to turn on the reactor (don't forget to install the lead-coated sight glasses!). Turn on the foreline pump and wait until the chamber volume has been pumped out to prevacuum. Start the diffusion pump and wait for it to fully warm up and reach operating mode.

Shut off access of the vacuum system to the working volume of the chamber.

Slightly open the needle valve in the deuterium tank.

Raise the high voltage until you see plasma (it will form at 40 kV). Remember electrical safety rules.

If all goes well, you'll detect a burst of neutrons.

It takes a lot of patience to get the pressure up to the proper level, but once you get it right, it's pretty easy to manage.

Thank you for your attention!

Do-it-yourself nuclear power is possible. The Swedish police detained a 31-year-old resident of the city of Angelholm on charges of self-assembly of a nuclear reactor. The man was detained after he checked with local authorities whether the law forbids Swedish citizens to build nuclear reactors in the kitchen of their apartment. As the detainee explained, his interest in nuclear physics woke up in him in his teenage years.

A resident of Sweden began his experiment on building a nuclear reactor with his own hands at home half a year ago. The man received radioactive substances from abroad. He extracted other necessary materials from the dismantled fire detector.

The man did not hide his intentions to build a nuclear reactor at home at all and even kept a blog about how he creates it.

Despite the complete openness of the experiment, the authorities learned about the activity of the Swede only a few weeks later - when he turned to the Swedish State Office for Nuclear Safety. At the office, the man hoped to find out if it was legal to build a nuclear reactor at home.

To this, the man was told that specialists would come to his house to measure the level of radiation. However, the police came along with them.

“When they arrived, the police were with them. I had a Geiger counter, I did not notice any problems with radiation, ”the detainee told the local newspaper Helsingborgs Dagblad.

Police detained the man for questioning, where he later told law enforcement about his plans and was released.

The man told the newspaper that he managed to assemble an operating nuclear reactor at home with his own hands.

“To start generating electricity, you need a turbine and a generator, and it is very difficult to assemble it yourself,” the detainee said in an interview with a local newspaper.

Reportedly, the man spent about six thousand crowns on his project, which is approximately equal to $950.

After the police incident, he promised to focus on the "theoretical" aspects of nuclear physics.

Source: Gazeta.Ru

This is not the first case of building a nuclear reactor with your own hands at home.

Golf Manor, in Commerce, Michigan, which is 25 miles from Detroit, is one of those places where nothing out of the ordinary can happen. The only highlight during the day is the ice cream truck that comes around the corner. But June 26, 1995 was remembered by everyone for a long time.

Ask Dottie Pease about it. Walking down Pinto Drive, Pease saw about half a dozen people scurrying across the neighbor's lawn. Three of them, who were in respirators and "moon suits", dismantled the neighbor's barn with electric saws, put the pieces in large steel containers, on which there were signs of radioactive danger.

Having joined a bunch of other neighbors, Pease was seized by a feeling of anxiety: “I became very uncomfortable,” she later recalled. That day, officials from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) publicly stated that there was nothing to worry about. But the truth was much more serious: the barn emitted dangerous amounts of radiation, and according to the EPA, about 40,000 residents in this town were at risk.

The sweep was instigated by a neighbor boy named David Hahn. At one time, he was engaged in a Boy Scout project, and then tried to build a nuclear reactor in his mother's barn.

great ambition

In early childhood, David Khan was the most ordinary child. The blond and clumsy boy played baseball and kicked a soccer ball, and at some point joined the Boy Scouts. His parents, Ken and Patty, divorced and the boy lived with his father and stepmother, who was called Kathy, in the town of Clinton. He usually spent his weekends at Golf Manor with his mother and her friend, whose name was Michael Polasek.

Dramatic changes occurred when he was ten. Then Katya's father gave David the book The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments ("The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments"). He read it enthusiastically. At the age of 12, he was already making extracts from his father's institute textbooks on chemistry, and at 14, he made nitroglycerin.

One night, their house in Clinton shook from a powerful explosion in the basement. Ken and Kathy found the little boy half-conscious, lying on the floor. It turned out that he was crushing some substance with a screwdriver, and it caught fire in him. He was rushed to the hospital where his eyes were washed.

Cathy forbade him to experiment at her place, so he moved his research to his mother's barn at Golf Manor. Neither Patty nor Michael had the slightest idea what this shy teenager was doing in the barn, although it was strange that he often wore a protective mask in the barn, and sometimes took off his clothes only around two in the morning, working late. They chalked it up to their own limited education.

Michael, however, recalled Dev once telling him, "We'll run out of oil someday."

Convinced that his son needed discipline, his father, Ken, believed that the solution to the problem lay in the goal that he could not achieve - the Scout Eagle, which required 21 scout badges. David earned the Atomic Energy Science Badge in May 1991, five months after his 15th birthday. But now he had stronger ambitions.

Invented personality

He decided that he would be engaged in the translucence of everything that he could, and for this he needed to build a neutron "gun". To gain access to the radioactive materials needed to build and operate a nuclear reactor at home, the young nuclear scientist decided to use tricks from various high-profile magazine articles. He came up with a fictitious person.

He wrote a letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in which he claimed to be a high school physics teacher at Chippewa Valley High School. The director of the agency for the production and distribution of isotopes, Donald Erb, described to him in detail the isolation and production of radioactive elements, and also explained the characteristics of some of them, in particular, which of them, when irradiated with neutrons, can support a nuclear chain reaction.

When Samodelkin inquired about the risks of such work, Erb assured him "that the danger is negligible" because "possession of any radioactive material in quantities and forms capable of presenting a threat requires a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or an equivalent organization."

The resourceful inventor had read that tiny amounts of the radioactive isotope americium-241 could be found in smoke detectors. He contacted detector companies and told them that he needed a large number of these devices to complete a school project. One of the companies sold him about a hundred defective detectors for a dollar each.

He didn't know exactly where the americium was in the detector, so he wrote to an electronics firm in Illinois. An employee from the company's customer service told him that they would be happy to help him. Thanks to her help, David was able to extract the material. He placed the americium inside a hollow piece of lead with a very small hole on one side, from which he expected the alpha rays to come out. In front of the hole, he placed a sheet of aluminum so that its atoms would absorb alpha particles and emit neutrons. The neutron gun for processing materials for a nuclear reactor was ready.

The heating grid in a gas lantern is a small divider through which the flame passes. It is coated with a compound that included thorium-232. When bombarded with neutrons, the fissile isotope uranium - 233 was supposed to turn out of it. The young physicist purchased several thousand incandescent grids in various stores selling warehouse surpluses and burned them with a blowtorch into a pile of ash.

To isolate the thorium from the ashes, he purchased $1,000 worth of lithium batteries and cut them all to pieces with metal shears. He wrapped lithium scraps and thorium ash in a ball of aluminum foil and heated it in the flame of a Bunsen torch. He isolated pure thorium at 9,000 times the amount found in nature and 170 times the level required by the NRC license. But the americium-based neutron gun was not powerful enough to turn thorium into uranium.

More help from NRC

David diligently worked after school in all sorts of eateries, grocers and furniture stores, but this work was just a source of money for his experiments. At school, he studied without much diligence, never stood out in anything, received poor marks in the general exam in mathematics and reading tests (but at the same time he showed excellent results in science).

For a new gun, he wanted to find radium. Dev began to scour the surrounding junkyards and antique shops looking for watches that used radium in the glowing dial paint. If such a watch came across to him, then he scraped off the paint from them and put it in a vial.

One day he was walking slowly along the street of the town of Clinton, and as he said, in one of the windows of an antique store, he caught the eye of an old table clock. With a close "hack" of the watch, he found that he could scrape together a whole vial of radium paint. He bought a watch for $10.

Then he turned to radium and converted it into the form of salt. Whether he knew it or not, he was in danger at this moment.

Erb of the NRC told him that "the best material from which alpha particles can produce neutrons is beryllium." David asked his friend to steal beryllium from the chemistry lab for him and then placed it in front of a lead box containing radium. His amusing americium cannon has been replaced by a more powerful radium cannon.

To build a nuclear reactor at home, the inventor managed to find a certain amount of tar (uranium) blende, an ore in which uranium is contained in small quantities, and crushed it with a sledgehammer into dust. He aimed the beams from his cannon at the powder, in the hope that he would be able to get at least some fissile isotope. He didn't succeed. The neutrons that represented the projectiles in his cannon were moving too fast.

"Imminent Danger"

After he was 17 years old, David got the idea of ​​building a model of a breeder nuclear reactor, that is, a nuclear reactor that not only generated electricity, but also produced new fuel. His model had to use real radioactive elements and real nuclear reactions take place. As a working drawing, he was going to use a diagram that he found in one of his father's textbooks.

In every possible way neglecting safety precautions, radium and americium were mixed, which were in his hands along with beryllium and aluminum. The mixture was wrapped in aluminum foil, from which he made a semblance of the working area of ​​a nuclear reactor. The radioactive ball was surrounded by small foil-wrapped cubes of thorium ash and uranium powder, tied together with a sanitary bandage.

“It was radioactive as hell,” David said, “much more than when it was disassembled.” Then he began to realize that he was putting himself and those around him in serious danger.

When the Geiger counter that David had started registering radiation five houses away from his mother's residence, he decided that he had "too much radioactive material in one place", after which he decided to dismantle the nuclear reactor. He hid some of the materials at his mother's house, left some in the shed, and put the rest in the trunk of his Pontiac.

At 2:40 am on August 31, 1994, the Clinton police received a call from an unknown person who said that a young man appeared to be trying to steal tires from a car. When the police arrived, David told them that he was going to meet his friend. This seemed unconvincing to the police, and they decided to inspect the car.

They opened the trunk and found a tool box in it, which was locked and wrapped with a sanitary bandage. There were also cubes wrapped in foil with some mysterious gray powder, small disks, cylindrical metal objects, and mercury relays. The cops were greatly alarmed by the tool box, which David told them was radioactive, and they were afraid of it like an atomic bomb.

A federal plan to counter the radioactive threat was put in place, and state officials began consulting with the EPA and NRC.

In the barn, radiological experts found an aluminum pie pan, a fireproof glass Pyrex cup, a milk bottle crate, and a host of other things contaminated with radiation levels that were a thousand times higher than natural. Since it could have been blown around the area by wind and rain, as well as the lack of preservation in the barn itself, according to the EPA memo, "this represented an imminent threat to public health."

After the workers in hazmat suits dismantled the barn, they piled what was left into 39 barrels, which were loaded onto trucks and transported to a burial site in the Great Salt Desert. There, the remains of experiments to build a nuclear reactor at home were buried along with other radioactive debris.

"This was a situation that regulation failed to anticipate," said Dave Minaar, an expert radiologist at the Michigan Department of Quality. Environment, - "It was believed that the average person would not be able to get their hands on the technology or materials required to engage in experiments in this area."

David Hahn is now in the Navy where he reads about steroids, melanin, the genetic code, prototype nuclear reactors, amino acids and criminal law. “I wanted to have something noticeable in my life,” he explains now. "I still have time". Regarding his exposure to radiation, he said, "I don't think I've taken more than five years of my life."