Didn't Asimov write about "micro-piles" in The Martian Way?

[james_davis_nicoll]

Toshiba has [allegedly] developed a new class of micro size Nuclear Reactors that is designed to power individual apartment buildings or city blocks.

Seen via talheres

[Developed appears to mean "have a design but not an actual reactor]

[200 kW seems a bit powerful for a city block, at least one with homes on it. The average American household uses about 11,000 kW-hrs a year, according to the first site I found, which if I've done the math right is about 1300 Watts. 200 kW would power about 150 households. Looking at it another way, assuming three people per household, you'd need about 450 of these for Kitchener and once the system was mature, you'd be replacing about a dozen a year on average (One hopes that it doesn't work out so that the replacement rate is nearly zero until about 40 years after the reactors showed up, at which point it zooms up to nearly 100%)]

Comments

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Considering how good my building management is at keeping the boilers in decent shape?

That scares the shit out of me.

[(Anonymous)]

Shiny, shiny, shiny. Why would you actually want one?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

One is no fun [1]. Lots of inexpensive nuclear reactors don't solve all of the problems of increasing conventional fuel costs [2] but they solve a lot of them.

1: Ignoring those researchers who would derive a great deal of pleasure from their own little reactor.

2: Short version: batteries suck, therefore cars will use something like gasoline for a long time to come.