[TML] [Merchant Shipping] Some ideas I came up with to make merchant shipping more interesing

[shadow at shadowgard.com]

On 12 Apr 2008 at 22:23, matphasriscova wrote:

> Assuming the reactor even _needs_ control rods in first place.  For
> designs with negative temperature coefficients of reactivity (liquid
> halide thorium reactor, pebble bed modular reactor to name two), you can
> throttle power by varying how fast the coolant (liquid halide salt,
> heavy water, liquid metal, noble gas, etc) is pumped.  Depending on
> economics, the plant operator could also divert some of their plant's
> output to something like desalination, process heat, etc when the
> external load drops.

Heck, some power systems have built huge reserviors and use off peak 
power to pump water into them. Then at peak power times they use the 
water to generate power.

Not real practical in Kansas, but any place that has sufficent water 
and decent hills or mountins can make good use of it.

If the real world ever gets decent, relatively cheap high capacity 
batteries that can handle a lot of charge/discharge cycles, we'll 
likely see power demand leveling off because businesses will be able 
to switch to the cheaper rates avilable if you pay extra for drawing 
during peak times and les at off-peak. They can use the batteries as 
a load leveler.

Heck, it'd probably be worth it to the utilities to give breaks to 
folks who install them in their homes.

A nice side benefit would be supplying backup power if there's an 
outage.


--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com