(November 16, 2017 at 4:20 am)Fake Messiah Wrote: There seems to be some optimism for clean future after all with Kilopower Reactor. While aimed at Mars and space missions to provide electricity because so far they expect it to yield from ranges from 1 kilowatt to 10 kilowatt this miniature nuclear power generator could be made to power cities on Earth because they also say:
Quote:“What we are striving to do is give space missions an option beyond RTGs, which generally provide a couple hundred watts or so,” Mason said. “The big difference between all the great things we’ve done on Mars, and what we would need to do for a human mission to that planet, is power. This new technology could provide kilowatts and can eventually be evolved to provide hundreds of kilowatts, or even megawatts of power.”source article
I can not imagine kilowatt sized nuclear reactors could possibly be cost competitive with conventional or renewable generation on earth. Also giving each house a device containing several kilograms of uranium and a plumbing system full of liquid sodium seems to promise countless exciting challenges for DHS and FEMA, to say nothing of EPA.
