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Bloom Box – Energy from (Free) Oxygen
Not ready to install a personal nuclear reactor in your backyard? Listen up. A new hope for living off-grid may be around the corner, called Bloom Box. [More recently the company has been calling the large units "energy servers"].
Bloom Boxes look un-remarkable – large silver enclosures that resemble supercomputers from a few years ago. Despite the lack of style they can boast a NASA pedigree. Some of the underlying Bloom Box technology was developed to support a proposed NASA manned mission to Mars. The mission was later scrapped but from the ashes has risen an interesting gadget.
Each Bloom Box contains specially manufactured discs that convert common elements in the air, principally oxygen, into power once the box is fully warmed up (to a sultry 1,000 degrees C).
Corporate-sized units sell for $700,000 – $800,000 USD, and founder/CEO K.R. Sridhars claims these are in use today at major corporations, including FedEx, Walmart, Staples, Google, Coca Cola, Bank of America, Cox and eBay.
The fuel may be free but there are downsides to consider. First, the energy-producing process produces carbon emissions. Carbon neutral power generation however can be achieved by choosing to use bio-gas from landfill waste (as eBay is doing). Second, the fuel savings must be weighed against the high price of the generators. eBay claims to have saved $100,000 in energy costs over 9 months, but that is with 5 Bloom Boxes installed at a total investment of roughly $4M USD. It will take eBay 30 years to recoup that investment, and it’s unclear what maintenance will cost or what life expectency these units will demonstrate.
Smaller Bloom Box units may be on the way – adequate to power a typical American household, and presumably at a price much, much lower than the corporate-sized giants. Sridhar, likely speaking idealistically, would like to see household units cost as little as $3,000.
CBS News has an extensive interview with K.R. Sridhars, for those interested in more information.
Your Own Private Nuclear Reactor
Alternative fuels be damned, what’s wrong with good old fashioned nuclear power? OK to be fair that’s not exactly the message coming from Hyperion Power Generation. Hyperion, along with Los Alamos National Labs, has developed somewhat of a personal generator that can be shipped right to your backyard and generate more power than you could possibly use. That is if your “person” can afford the $25 Million price tag (USD). Your very own mini nuclear fission reactor comes sealed with enough fuel to power 20,000 typical U.S. households and according to Hyperion, the units overall cost per watt is lower than existing fossil fuels or alternative fuels currently available.
Read the full press release from Hyperion.
Here’s the scoop. Each reactor module is roughly the size of a hottub. It comes factory sealed and is designed to stay sealed. There are no moving parts and thus minimal to no maintenance required. Modules can even be chained together to provide more power for larger applications. The amount of waste after 5 years is roughly the size of a softball and the waste itself can be reused via fuel recycling to further reduce environmental impact. A side benefit of the generating process is it can also be used to purify water – a double bonus in remote/rugged situations.
On the safety front, Hyperion claims the amount of fissionable material in each module is so small that even if exposed the fuel cools immediately avoiding any kind of explosion or emergency.
This has interesting applications for communities, remote sites and super wealthy folks like Tony Stark. Talk about a new target for the “not in my backyard” crowd, though!
Maybe Ghostbusters-style proton accelerator backpacks are closer to reality than we thought?
Update: Will Boulder, CO be an early leader in nuclear energy alternatives?
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