Small Distributed Nuclear Power Generation

Oct 14, 2008

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I just read an interesting interview with John Deal, CEO of Hyperion Power Generation. Hyperion is building a nuclear reactor small enough to be shipped by train or truck but powerful enough to supply electricity to a small city. At a cost of roughly $30 million each, this reactor can supply up to 30 megawatts of usable electrical power, or enough to power 20,000 US households. The reactors life span is 8-10 years.

Just doing the math, $30 million spread over 20,000 homes, for 120 months equates to $12.50/household/month. Not bad. Not bad at all.

With all of the talk about a national energy policy during this election, its good to know at least one company is willing to push the nuclear option into the commercial market place. The next U.S. President should adopt this company and streamline the regulatory process to these into working in small towns across the nation.

Comments

4 responses to “Small Distributed Nuclear Power Generation”

Rod Adams

October 15, 2008

Tyler – like you, I am very interested in the Hyperion Power Module. It has some appealing characteristics both as a heat supply and as a business concept. I really like the idea of achieving economy of scale by mass producing small, identical units in a factory. That concept is what underlies the entire industrial revolution – started by Eli Whitney and the cotton gin.

If you want to learn more about Hyperion and how they intend to introduce their product and expand their market, you might want to listen to an interview that I conducted with John (Grizz) Deal for The Atomic Show Podcast.

This is definitely one of the developments that gives me a great deal of optimism about the future – even in a time of economic turmoil partially caused by concerns over ever increasing energy prices.

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Tyler

October 15, 2008

Rod, Thanks for the link. I’ll take a listen. The more I think about it, the more I like this distributed approach to the impending energy crisis.

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Ken Kaufman

December 29, 2008

From a business model standpoint, it would be interesting to see how to best commercialize a product like this.

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Thomas A. Palmer

October 4, 2009

I like the concept of this. The only concerns are security, and spent fuel. I assume they’ve worked the ‘fail-safe’ into it (graphite dump?) The ,logistics of removal of spent fuel could add a significant cost (how to handle a ‘hot’ reactor in 10 years / facility to open and remove spent fuel).

-TA

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