Can we have mini-nukes?

SteveF at Daily Pundit links to the greatest thing since cold fusion.

Nuke to the Future
By Dave Maass

Published: November 21, 2007

The portable nuclear reactor is the size of a hot tub. It’s shaped like a sake cup, filled with a uranium hydride core and surrounded by a hydrogen atmosphere. Encase it in concrete, truck it to a site, bury it underground, hook it up to a steam turbine and, voila, one would generate enough electricity to power a 25,000-home community for at least five years.

The company Hyperion Power Generation was formed last month to develop the nuclear fission reactor at Los Alamos National Laboratory and take it into the private sector. If all goes according to plan, Hyperion could have a factory in New Mexico by late 2012, and begin producing 4,000 of these reactors.

Not quite a Shipstone, but awfully good! Ever since the local power company shut down our local (coal-burning) power plant, then was bought out by the big regional power company, I have hoped to see local nodes return to the grid. In the old days, when the coal-burning plant was still on line, regional blackouts did not affect the island, since we had local power.