Refrigerator-size nuclear reactors can power small towns

By Jeremy van Loon and Alex Morales, businessweek.

When most people think of nuclear power plants, visions of huge complexes like Three Mile Island come to mind. Now companies are rushing to develop a new generation of refrigerator-size nuclear reactors to help meet the world's growing demand for electricity.


John Deal, chief executive officer of Hyperion Power Generation, intends to apply for a license "within a year" for units that would power a small factory or towns too remote to be connected to traditional electricity grids. The Santa Fe-based company, as well as Japan's Toshiba, are vying for a head start over traditional reactor makers General Electric (GE) and Areva in downsizing nuclear technology.

While large-scale nuclear plants now under way cost an average of $6.2 billion and will generate multiple gigawatts of power, Hyperion's price tag is $50 million for a 25-megawatt reactor, more comparable in cost to diesel generators or wind farms. Transportable by truck, the units would come in a sealed box and require less maintenance than a fossil fuel plant. Developers say they'd cost 15 percent less per megawatt of capacity than the full-scale atomic reactors now on the drawing board, according to World Nuclear Assn. data. "A 25Mw plant would put electricity into 20,000 homes, and it would fit inside this room," says James Kohlhaas, vice-president at a Lockheed Martin (LMT) unit that builds power systems for remote military bases. "It's a pretty elegant micro-grid solution."

So far, no manufacturer has sought certification for any small reactor, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Formal approvals would likely take three to five years, the same as for bigger reactors, says Scott Burnell, a commission spokesman.

Environmentalists are concerned that small reactors would pose the same risk of leaking radioactive materials as their larger counterparts, says Jan Beránek, nuclear energy project leader at Greenpeace International in Amsterdam. "Terrorists could hijack a reactor and directly use it to cause a meltdown or use it to fabricate fissile materials for later use in a weapon," Beránek says.