admin answers:

You likely don’t have the space to build a nuclear generator and provide adequate shielding. The uranium in a nuclear plant is basically a heat source, used to heat either water or liquid sodium which then drives an electromagnetic turbine. So you need room to put the turbine. Liquid sodium is tricky to handle — it tends to catch fire when exposed to water — and water used in a nuclear plant turns to steam, and requires some containment vessels.

You also need a place for the water or sodium to cool off after it drives the turbine. A commercial water-cooled nuclear plant uses a cooling tower on the order of 100m high (about like a 30-floor building). For residential use you don’t need a 100m tower (nor would the landlord let you install it through your roof) but you will still need some place to let the water or sodium cool.

In 1994 a boy scout who lived near Detroit, Michigan collected americium from smoke detectors and thorium from lantern mantles and built a sort of working nuclear reactor, but the radioactivity spread across his neighborhood and he never got working power out of it. He did, however, attract the attention of the federal government, which took away the radioactive materials and his mother’s tool shed (which had become radioactive) and some other things that had become radioactive.

If you don’t in fact have weapons grade uranium, but only commercial uranium, then you may need to enrich the stuff (meaning to sort out the U-235 from the U-238), because the U-235 is fissionable and the U-238 is not. To do this properly you need the facility to work with uranium hexafluoride (a gas) and in particular to run it through a centrifuge, then to remove the fluorine from the uranium. Fluorine is toxic and corrosive and eats just about everything except fluorspar. It’s difficult to handle and store, and you’ll run into major problems trying to combine it with the uranium and then to dissociate it from the uranium.

Overall you’re going to be much happier spending your money on solar plates. Sorry!

admin answers:

You can do just about anything if you spend enough time,effort AND money .

The real questions are, “Is it practicle? And Is it worth it?”

If you don’t mind having a tank of Cow S hit fermenting in your back yard you can certainly harvest methane to operate a generator. If you are only going to run the generator ocassionally so that you can save less than a dollars worth of electricity, then I am afraid that the economics just don’t make such a project worth it. (There is a reason you don’t see many of these systems in common use)

admin answers:

Uranium is a very heavy metal which can be used as an abundant source of concentrated energy.
Uranium occurs in most rocks in concentrations of 2 to 4 parts per million and is as common in the Earth’s crust as tin, tungsten and molybdenum. Uranium occurs in seawater, and can be recovered from the oceans.
Uranium was discovered in 1789 by Martin Klaproth, a German chemist, in the mineral called pitchblende. It was named after the planet Uranus, which had been discovered eight years earlier.
Uranium was apparently formed in supernova about 6.6 billion years ago. While it is not common in the solar system, today its slow radioactive decay provides the main source of heat inside the Earth, causing convection and continental drift.
The high density of uranium means that it also finds uses in the keels of yachts and as counterweights for aircraft control surfaces, as well as for radiation shielding.
Uranium has a melting point is 1132°C. The chemical symbol for uranium is U.

Uranium is widespread in many rocks, and even in seawater. However, like other metals, it is seldom sufficiently concentrated to be economically recoverable. Where it is, we speak of an orebody. In defining what is ore, assumptions are made about the cost of mining and the market price of the metal. Uranium reserves are therefore calculated as tonnes recoverable up to a certain cost.

Australia’s reasonably assured resources and inferred resources of uranium are 1,673,000 tonnes of uranium recoverable at up to US$130/kg U (well under the market ‘spot’ price), Kazakhstan’s are 651,000 tonnes of uranium and Canada’s are 485,000 tU. Australia’s resources in this category are almost one third of the world’s total, Kazakhstan’s are 12%, Canada’s 9%.

Several countries have significant uranium resources. Apart from the top three, they are in order: Russia, South Africa, Namibia, Brazil, Niger, USA, China, Jordan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine and India. Other countries have smaller deposits which could be mined if needed.

Kazakhstan is the world’s top uranium producer, followed by Canada and then Australia as the main suppliers of uranium to world markets – now over 50,000 tU per year.

Plutonium-238 has a half-life of 88 years and emits alpha particles. It is a heat source in radioisotope thermoelectric generators, which are used to power some spacecraft. Plutonium-240 has a high rate of spontaneous fission, raising the neutron flux of any sample it is in. The presence of plutonium-240 limits a sample’s usability for weapons or reactor fuel, and determines its grade. Plutonium isotopes are expensive and inconvenient to separate, so particular isotopes are usually manufactured in specialized reactors.

Plutonium was first synthesized in 1940 by a team led by Glenn T. Seaborg and Edwin McMillan at the University of California, Berkeley laboratory by bombarding uranium-238 with deuterons. Trace amounts of plutonium were subsequently discovered in nature. Producing plutonium in useful quantities for the first time was a major part of the Manhattan Project during World War II, which developed the first atomic bombs. The first nuclear test, “Trinity” (July 1945), and the second atomic bomb used to destroy a city (Nagasaki, Japan, in August 1945), “Fat Man”, both had cores of plutonium-239. Human radiation experiments studying plutonium were conducted without informed consent, and a number of criticality accidents, some lethal, occurred during and after the war. Disposal of plutonium waste from nuclear power plants and dismantled nuclear weapons built during the Cold War is a nuclear-proliferation and environmental concern. Other sources of plutonium in the environment are fallout from numerous above-ground nuclear tests (now banned).

admin answers:

St. Joseph’s Center deals with Power Supplies. We are happy when focus is given to environment friendly Power Units.
In this regard, one can consider Solar Energy panels (actually called photovoltaic cells) that generate up to 1000 watts of energy per meter squared in sunlight.
Wind turbine generators are useful in open areas of land that have no other use. They generate useful energy that can be stored in lead acid accumulators in remote areas.
Hydroelectric power generators have been the standard source of clean, env. Friendly power for many years. A single dam with a hydel unit can suppy many cities with power.
Tapping power from waves and tide that comes in at the sea shore is another useful source of energy that is being studied today. The British are working on a project in this field.
Movement is a source of power. In the Automatic Wrist Watch, the movement of the hand is converted into a winding force that keeps the watch wound and working throughout the day.
Bacteria convert decaying matter into useful gases that can be used for cooking. In my electronic project for SJRTC in Rajagiri College in Ernakulam of Kerala, India, I was pleased to find natural gas was being used in the hostel mess stoves to prepare meals for us. The natural gas is produced when bacteria ferment the decaying organic materials in an nonaerobic condition.

These are standard and time tested methods of power supply which is non-conventional.

admin answers:

If you can get past the hurdle of having sufficient wind and any local codes or ordinances then it is certainly possible for you to have a wind generator. You can store the electricity in batteries and use a inverter to make AC power for your use.

Unfortunately it probably won’t provide the kind of relief you are hoping for. If you want to look further you could try some websites similar to this one:

http://www.mikeswindmillshop.com/wgenerators.html

admin answers:

Yeah, but it would be a bit costly. You’d need a transfer switch and a fairly large gas or diesel powered generator. But the size of the generator would depend on the type of things you would need to keep running; ie – fridge, deepfreeze, furnace/electric heat, computers. You could also look into a large UPS (Uninterruptable Power Source), its essential just a big bank of car batteries, that , once the power goes out, kicks in and continues to keep your stuff running until the batteries die out. Obviouslt the more batteries the longer tiem you have before it dies too. At least with a generator you could last for as long as you’ve got fuel. It really depends on a lot of things. But these are definately a couple of common options. Also if your living in a more remote area, you may want to consider using an alternate form of power, like a wind generator, or Solar panels. Both could provide simple power for a few key items. Anyways, hope this helps.

Later

admin answers:

Space power satellites have been proposed many times.

It’s bound to be cheaper on the ground, however. If you calculate the area of say, Colorado, that needs to be covered with solar cells to supply all the electricity needs of the USA, you’ll be surprised at how small it is.

admin answers:

Wind, solar and hydropower