Lycan Powerbox, Goal Zero Yeti, or Transatomic reactor -- which one will you choose?
That's right: personal power plants. You might have never thought those two words would go together...ever. Well, guess what?
With the Tesla-grade batteries powering the Lycan and Robert Workman with his Yeti, these home generators are now up against fourth-generation nuclear options backed by Bill Gates and Peter Thiel. Now, the great news is that for less than $2,000, you could have a Lycan or a Yeti shipped to your house by the end of this week. However, if we are to believe Peter Thiel: “Our power grid could have been carbon-free years ago," -- had the United States embraced the potential of molten salt reactors when they were first conceived back in the 1960s.
The bad news: Thiel and his Transatomic team don’t plan to have a functioning prototype until 2020 (still a little bit of lag there) and beyond the four-year waiting period, their ultimate goal, a 520 watt reactor, will cost a projected $2 billion. Ouch.
So, for now, I guess you’ll have to settle for one of the solar options -- unless, of course, Bill Gates and his Traveling Wave reactor team TerraPower can release a modular nuclear device competitive for less than $2,000. Considering that a touch unlikely, let’s revisit the Transatomic option, shall we?
Molton salt reactor, you say?
That’s right. Two MIT graduates, Leslie Dewan and Mark Massie, are the founders of Transatomic -- the nuclear horse Peter Thiel is betting on. Transatomic is currently designing a molten salt reactor fueled by liquid uranium. The most intriguing point of information on this design is that the liquid uranium fuel in question just so happens to be a byproduct of conventional reactors. This means that if Dewan and Massie’s designs pan out, they will be creating generators which consume and neutralize dangerous nuclear waste! Those are two very big birds with one (OK, potentially $2B) stone.
To give some perspective, the reactors presently operating in the united States produce more than 2,000 tons of nuclear waste a year. The existing stockpiles of this waste are at quantity which could power the United States for approximately 80 years using the molten salt reactor model.
