by "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
Feb 17, 2008 at 11:52 AM
<Willie.Mookie@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Consider that a nuclear weapons costs about $10 million and
> generates 1e+24 watts - that's about 1e+17 watts per dollar.
Yes -- for about a nanosecond. Practical power plants have lifetimes
measured in decades.
> If nuclear power plants cost 1 trillion times as much as nuclear
> bombs you'd get a kilowatt per penny! Power would be too cheap
> to meter.
A trillion nanoseconds is about 17 minutes.
> Cost per watt is a function of energy per unit of exchanger area.
> That is a function of the fourth power of temperature.
Only for radiative heat transfer. Boilers in power plants use
conductive heat trasfer, which is roughly linear with temperature.
> Today's nuclear reactors operate at 600F if they operated at 5,600F
> they'd be 1/1000th the cost per watt they are today.
No. The amount of energy in a uranium rod is almost exactly the same
regardless of its temperature.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html
before emailing me.
