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

[casaubon.livejournal.com]

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.

If you're calculating how many you need to power a city you don't need to know the average usage, you need to know the peak.
But I assume these are designed to be in addition to the existing power grid with the owner selling spare power to the grid.