19 Jul, 2010
Building your own DIY nuclear reactor, microgeneration, off-grid power, do it yourself energy
Posted by: Geoffd In: Climate change| DIY tips| Energy| Renewable energy| Solar power| Sustainable power| Wind turbine power| diy| do it yourself
We don’t have any DIY do it yourself plans for reactors, but this is very interesting as a way to microgenerate electricity. Solar for individual buildings, down to shed or outdoor building size, and small scale nuclear for blocks or factories. Bill Gates and Toshiba are planning a small scale reactor apparently.
We have a green and eco building background and now support nuclear as the alternative – more coal and gas – is so bad for the climate. The fears about storage of waste are misguided as in the future it may all be recyclable. And low level radiation is part of nature. People ignore coal because it is an old fashioned working class sort of energy source: nuclear is a sort of far out SF dangerous thing, mainly due to military use in WW2 and the cold war – if that had not happened (fantasy!) then nuclear power stations would be far more popular.
Chernobyl and Three Mile Island show how infrequently there are problems, and how small scale the fatalities are – compare to fatalities in coal mining, gas extraction, and transport, illness, etc. Also new designs are safer.
Getting off the elecricity grid is the aim as then central large scale plants can be reduced, or fewer new ones built.
Building a DIY reactor - this is about solar power from our book
With all this energy generation, adding more sources usually gets absorbe din the overall increase in eberhy consumption. Norway has added more wind farms, but they do not decrease energy use, just get added to conventional sources of power.
Building your own reactor may sound extreme, but only because people are scared of nuclear, which is irrational when compared to the dangers of say coal powered station, in mining, transport, pollution (illness) and carbon emmissions.
People are experimenting with low energy fusion reactors (Bussard reactors) using ionized hydrogen as well.
So if you fancy building a DIY reactor, get searching for plans, get some cash, and get building now!
See our DIY Building pages on microgenration of power using solar, water, biomass, and many other sources >
There is also the DIY Building article on renewable energy >
