Thursday, November 10, 2005

Kevin Bullis On Small Nuclear

MIT Technology Review has an article by Kevin Bullis on building small nuclear as a way to get around the expense of building large ones, but this to me does seem like a potential proliferation problem, despite the hopeful rhetoric of cited expert and recent Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei. But at least he's not one of those Pollyannas who refuse to see problems:
On the downside, building small reactors means losing out on the economy of scale that has driven a trend toward bigger and bigger reactors, says Wade. He hopes to make up for this by creating ways to mass-produce the reactors in modules that can be quickly assembled on site.