(Photo courtesy of Hyperion)
Most nuclear power plants are huge
multi-billion-dollar operations that take
ten years to build. But they can be much
smaller. Lester Graham reports on a company
that’s planning hot-tub sized reactors:
Transcript
Most nuclear power plants are huge
multi-billion-dollar operations that take
ten years to build. But they can be much
smaller. Lester Graham reports on a company
that’s planning hot-tub sized reactors:
It’s difficult to get political and financial backing for building big nuclear power plants.
But one company plans to build miniature nuclear reactors.
John Deal is the CEO of Hyperion.
He says the small reactor invented at the Los Alamos National Laboratory could be
useful for isolated areas. It could also be used by smaller cities to provide most of
their power needs.
“You might have a community of 20, 30, 40 thousand people and they can have their
own power plant. And then they might feed back their excess or draw down from
some centralized facility for when they’ve got power spikes or peak demand.”
There’s a lot of interest. But for right now Hyperion is not taking orders for the mini-
nukes from Western nations. Deal says Hyperion is first trying to bring power to
isolated areas in the developing world.
For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.