Is small the future of nuclear power generation?
Distributed energy generation, hailed by most environmentalists as the future of sustainable electricity production, is about powering a country with hundreds, potentially thousands, of renewable and clean energy systems with some help from natural gas. It’s efficient because power is generated where it’s used. It’s flexible because projects can be built quickly when needed. It saves money in the long run because there’s less need for expensive transmission lines that carry the power elsewhere. And if one generator fails, its relatively small size means it doesn’t threaten the stability of the entire system. This, of course, is the antithesis of centralized power generation that relies on a dozens or so large nuclear and fossil-fuel plants. Proponents of distributed generation cite the massive size and cost of nuclear power plants as one reason, beyond safety and waste-management concerns, and the technology is unsustainable and far too risky. Not so, argues one start-up firm from Sant
