Sunday, November 09, 2008

Nuclear power to the people

"Nuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000 homes will be on sale within five years, say scientists at Los Alamos, the US government laboratory which developed the first atomic bomb.", according to this article from The Guardian. "The US government has licensed the technology to Hyperion , a New Mexico-based company which said last week that it has taken its first firm orders and plans to start mass production within five years. 'Our goal is to generate electricity for 10 cents a watt anywhere in the world,' said John Deal, chief executive of Hyperion. 'They will cost approximately $25m [£13m] each. For a community with 10,000 households, that is a very affordable $250 per home.'"

Hyperion is not the only company producing min-power plants. Toshiba has a 200KW reactor that is only 20' x 6' in size, is self sustaining, and can produce electricity at 5 cents/ KW for 40 years.

Neither system contains weapons grade material. With no internal moving parts, both are sealed in concrete for their entire service life, making them highly resistant to disaster, natural or man made. (Not that it will make any difference to the ecofreaks, of course)

Just as only Nixon could go to China, only a Democrat dare defy the environmental lobby... I hope the new President will dare do so, on behalf of this and many other technologies that can assist both Global Warming and the energy situation.

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