By Andy May
I first read about Deployable Energy on Joanne Nova’s website and was very interested in their innovative small modular nuclear reactor and how it worked. The reactor was produced under President Trump’s 2025 nuclear reactor plan. It was designed by Australian Bobby Gallagher and his team in Houston. It can produce one megawatt of power, at a cost of 15 cents per kilowatt hour, for five years before refueling is required. The entire reactor can fit on the bed of a Ford F150 pickup, as shown in the photo. More importantly, it can be manufactured in a factory, fits into one 20-foot shipping container, uses the existing conventional supply chain, and requires no exotic custom-made components.
The advantages are obvious, the reactor has less than a six-month lead time, it is transportable by rail, ship, conventional trucks, and normal logistics. It fits on an ordinary slab or other small structure and can be easily installed with off-the-shelf plumbing and wiring. It is cooled with either helium or water, or the excess heat can be used for additional power generation. It has inherent safety and security and does not require full-time monitoring; it is walk-away safe. The fuel is standard 4.95% enriched uranium oxide; that must be replaced every five years at a current cost of $1.3 million. The fuel is well below weapons grade and is readily available.
In the photo you can see Deployable Energy’s first reactor being trucked to Idaho National Laboratory to be tested. Their reactor first went critical on June 30, 2026. They recently signed a 145-billion-dollar contract for three GW of cumulative clean nuclear power deployments with Gridmarket.
What is truly amazing is the company built its first reactor and brought it online in 150 days and did it all with less than $10 million in private funding. They did this by utilizing low enriched uranium-235 (<5%), standard manufactured components, and mass manufacturing processes. Their original design was elegant and beautiful, but required a lot of exotic components and materials so it was abandoned. They quickly realized that the design was not scalable or economic. They redesigned it to use off-the-shelf readily available components wherever possible. Their goal was to make nuclear a commodity product; they needed a mass-producible reactor.
Gallagher admits that without the considerable help he received from Chris Wright and the Department of Energy he and his team could never have accomplished what they did. I was surprised to see the government and government employees helping him, as opposed to fighting against him.
Their next steps are to complete the full suite of required tests of their reactor and staff up for manufacturing. They also need a factory, and they are looking at several possible building locations in Texas. They also plan to build similar special reactors for ships and hope to become the first manufacturer of commercial maritime nuclear power plants. Their plants are ideal for critical infrastructure, like data centers, military installations, or hospitals.
Gallagher mentions in his interview on the Oilfield 360 interview that both China and Russia are building small reactors and have contracts to provide them around the world, in the USA we have none. China and Russia are leading today, and the USA has done nothing so far in the commercial nuclear space.
The greens are going to have a fit.
Hybrids with a million mile range.
Shades of “Back to the Future”..
Now they have to start making DeLoreans again !!
Yes! Just hook that reactor up to the pickup.
The answer is all in the marketing: This SMR is really just a ‘large battery’ which should make the eco-nuts happy?!? And think of all the eyesore windmills and solar panels we won’t have to look at. If it proves to be what it is said to be, it’s time to hand out the popcorn.
The Ford was picked for a reason.
The 1958 Ford Nucleon.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSZvHEF3NQV_KlOb56A1zBGj7oiq0edv9ACA3YGowg9zQ&s=10
The 1958 Ford Nucleon is a famous futuristic concept car built as a 3/8-scale model. It was designed to explore how atomic energy could power personal vehicles in the future. The car never had a working engine and was only a design study representing the ultimate optimism of the Atomic Age.
https://www.ans.org/news/article-3058/the-1958-ford-nucleon-an-idea-thats-still-ahead-of-its-time/
Just to rub it in, they should rename themselves “Deplorable Energy.”
That is sooo bad!
Thanks for the article and link. It’s hard to understand why democrats, and liberals in general, would be opposed to (I assume) scaleable power generation for the most power hungry industry out there – data centers. Especially hyper scale data centers run by the likes of Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft. AI is where it’s at in every field of endeavor for the forseeable future. Dems must know this.
Small neighborhood data centers may run on one of these. But the average data center in US needs 5-10 MegaWatts. AWS, Meta, Alphabet and Microsoft hyperscale projects need 20 – 100 MegaWatts. Ashburn Virginia’s “data center alley” would need 5,000 of these deployable units.
Are the deployable units “linkable”? How are they cooled?
Details of their technology are on their website.
Home | Deployable Energy
Go to the Technology Page.
Looks like a variety of cooling options including water, air cooling or process heat/cogeneration. The reactor fits in the back of a pickup truck (figuratively). The balance of plant is somewhat larger but also all transportable by truck. Uses uranium fuel of 5% enrichment, which is perfectly normal. Even better is a five-year operating cycle between refueling. Also noteworthy, they can be grouped together into entire generation parks and added to as needed.
Not just data centres. The use of this is potentially enormous for off-grid industrial sites which need constant, reliable power. Or indeed any site which needs its own power generation.
There are so many other designs that are years ahead….this one seems to be at only the investor Hoovering stage….
There are many much more advanced designs, this one can be manufactured from existing parts, can be shipped in an ordinary container or truck, and is scalable, that is why it is special. They have contracts, they do not need investors, the company is still private and will stay that way for some time to come I think.
Just sayin’….sounds a bit like submersible rides to the Titanic…
They can be cooled by helium, air, or water. I suspect most would choose water. Waste heat can also be used as a power source.
Depends entirely on the local circumstance. Water may not be available in sufficient quantity.
True, but there are other options.
Yeah, second paragraph… I need to read more carefully.
Technically, water might be the better choice. But I suspect we’re going to find that local resistance to hooking a fission reactor to the water supply will be very, very strong, I’m not sure I’d want one connected to my water supply. At least not until these things have a solid (decade or more) safety record.
I also suspect that 15 cents a kwh is likely to be optimistic. If the world is going to go nuclear, and don’t think think there’s any other choice in the very long run except for maybe some edge cases in thinly populated areas in the tropics, we’re quickly going to find that the existing Uranium supply is entirely inadequate. Paying for new mines, new enhancement facilities, and nuclear waste disposal is likely to boost the price. Maybe a little. Maybe a lot.
Then there’s the cost of insurance …
Overall, this does sound great. But so do solar or wind until you start to understand their limitations.
The water does not return to the supply.
Also, you can use an organic Rankine cycle to generate power without using any water. The waste heat can go to a dry heat exchanger using air.
Depends entirely on the available thermal efficiency of the selected power-extraction process (i.e., can’t be any higher than Carnot efficiency).
That is, no practical means to extract electrical energy from 200 deg-F warm water, but can do so from 500 deg-F hot water.
This is solid state technology, I think the operating temperature is ~2,000C. There is plenty of heat if the customer wants to attach a steam turbine.
Sorry, Andy, but I thought the issue in your OP that started this thread was in your statement:
“Waste heat can also be used as a power source.”
I commented elsewhere about the poor overall efficiency of using “solid state technology” as the primary method of extracting electrical power from the thermal energy produced by such a microreactor.
Can you please comment on what the reactor’s heat (energy) availability (i.e., output temperature and in helium or water flowrates) will be AFTER the primary extraction of power via solid state device(s)?
Also, is the cost of any secondary heat recovery, via a hot helium or hot water/steam system, included as part of the overall pickup truck-transportable sizing and estimated “per unit delivered” cost?
You should also ask Andy how many bolts are required and what the specs on them are, as they could bite into availability of bolts for aviation and automobiles.
Actually, I can’t think of another stupid question to ask him. I’ll work on it. I’m sure you are.
“. . . I can’t think of another stupid question to ask him. I’ll work on it.”
Hmmmm . . . you appear to be well-qualified to do that.
Hint for you: not that many people think it is stupid to be concerned over, and raise questions about, the issue of what is to happen to spent nuclear fuel (SNF) from microreactors that are envisioned to be deployed across the US and with supposedly little regulation by the NRC because they are “inherently safe”.
“It’s hard to understand why democrats, and liberals in general, would be opposed to (I assume) scaleable power generation for the most power hungry industry out there – data centers. Especially hyper scale data centers run by the likes of Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft. AI is where it’s at in every field of endeavor for the forseeable future. Dems must know this.”
It’s not hard to understand at all. They don’t want clean, reliable power, period. They want Western democracies to fail, so we become dependent on the globalists. And so there are fewer people.
It’s not that they don’t want clean, reliable power. It’s that they have been led to believe — probably incorrectly — that there are equally good energy solutions that don’t involve nuclear energy.
And if you, like I, believe that nuclear power is inevitable, you might want to consider that the US alone might end up with 10,000 or more reactors in daily operation. The rest of the world maybe 19 times as many eventually. I find the notion of a vast assemblage of aging nuclear plants controlled by cost-cutting “businessmen” more than a little scary. I suspect you might be underestimating the ability of bean-counters, marketing goons and such to find ways to blow even a theoretically “fail-safe” reactor up.
Sorry, Don, you’re wrong. Their “thought leaders” have said that clean reliable power would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machinegun. That de-industrializing the west, and re-distributing its wealth is their goal.
The reactor solves problems.
Socialists need problems to justify taking over things.
Indeed. People at varying levels of panic are more apt to sacrifice their rights and autonomy and bow to force than people who have resources and leisure to think about it are.
It (and similar designs) will be opposed as the dems/libs/so called greens want widespread poverty and deprivation to lower the world’s population by several billion in the foreseeable future. Anything that makes life easier or efficient is anathema to their goals.
Being in a fit, is the natural state for greens.
Some eco-activists like nuclear power as it avoids burning fossil fuels, others hate it.
Great news. Can’t wait till I get mine.
Dirty miner.
Sounds too good to be true(edit:seems I stole this line from atticman)) – and in case it works as promised they’ll find a way to keep it away from the market.
And keep in mind that you can built for that money almost half of an off-shore windturbine with so much cheap energy.
But if it reaches mainstream – wait for the market and buy as many Uranium/mining shares as you can. shares
And like quite a few such practical life-improving developments throughout history, this kind of innovation will take place while “the cognoscente” in this arena will pooh-pooh every aspect of its existence.
It will probably take the shock of sticking their finger in the live outlet of an operating SMR before the “cognoscente” will admit that they’ve actually been built and producing electricity.
Pro tip for SMR doubters –
read up on the Model T Ford take-up, and why it happened that way.
That $1.3 million every 5 years for refuel seems a little high. Anyone agree?
Of course, the photo shows only the nuclear heat source and a ute, but for conventional electricity generation there needs to be some type of turbine, which is not a problem because they exist. It would be interesting to see the overall cost of the whole box and dice.
Australia used to be a world class nuclear contender in the 1950 to 1980 era, but with irrational opposition from a handful of ignorant greens the ball was dropped. Same can be said for aviation, aircraft design/build, for electronic chips, for radio astronomy, for medical research, for automobiles …..
Modern politicians are too slow to learn never to make deals with greens to get bills into acts. There is usually a high cost for the deal. If you disagree, do tell us about any green deal that has been of benefit to Australians. (Communism is not a good deal).
Geoff S
Have a long spoon when you sup with the Devil…politicians never learn, are are too well bought.
[“the photo shows only the nuclear heat source and a ute, but for conventional electricity generation there needs to be some type of turbine, which is not a problem because they exist. It would be interesting to see the overall cost of the whole box and dice.!]
Apparently it all “fits into one 20-foot shipping container,”
No, actually $1.3 million sounds quite reasonable. That number would include: uranium, uranium conversion to UF6, enrichment, fuel fabrication. Uranium is cheap, but fuel abrication is considerably more expensive. The total fuel cost is still trivial compared to the value of the power it will produce over those five years. The overall cost of power from such a project would depend in large part on the time of amortization of the original all-in capital cost to purchase it.
Also remember that this reactor at a 1 MWe power capacity is expected to run for five years. That’s a lot of power for a mere $1.3 million plus amortizing the capital. This cost will have to be compared to competitors. In the case of remote industrial sites, that’s diesel fuel which is brutally expensive for power generation.
If it produces 1000kW continuously for 5 years, that is 1000x24x365x5=43,800,000kWh. At $1.3M, that equates to ~$0.03/kWh. Obviously, that is an oversimplification and there are other costs but it in the ballpark to compete with coal and blows renewables out of the water costwise.
Even at an 80% capacity factor, it’s still less than 4 cents/kWh.
The 15 cents/kWh for wholesale electricity means that this is not ready for the big leagues (without any massive subsidies like wind and solar), but it could find some useful niche markets.
I don’t want to sound in the least bit negative here, as I believe this is long overdue, but as SMEs proliferate, the demand for uranium goes up and so does the cost.
Bizarrely, as the UK drives itself into penury chasing the cause of unreliables, and the anticipated breaking ground for the first of 16 Rolls Royce SMRs in 2030 seems to have gone quiet, Sweden and the Czech Republic have engaged RR to build SMRs for them. Indeed, it seems the Czech Republic is committed enough to have bought part of RR.
Not really. I can’t be sure, but I think this power plant uses solid state technology, like thermoelectric or thermophotovoltaic (TPV) conversion—paired with a very compact heat‑management loop. It works almost like a solid-state battery. I have emailed them to ask.
There was news back in February: A Valar Atomics microreactor has been transported on a US Air Force cargo plane from March Air Reserve Base in CA to Hill Air Force Base, eventually be moved {140+ miles} to the Utah San Rafael Energy Lab for testing and evaluation.
I recall there were/are 5 companies working on such things. The technology is beyond me, so I appreciate your postings. I hope Deployable responds to your request.
Bill Gates is building a small reactor in Kemmerer, WY I believe.
I knew that, with Chris Wright at Dept of Energy (formerly the place where good ideas went to die) things might get a bit more interesting.
And it’s nice to see the NRC supporting nuclear power again, instead of trying to eliminate it.
Agreed. Now that Greg Jaczko and Allison Macfarlane are now long gone, NRC might indeed actually be of some use.
At the risk of being thought a party-pooper, I’d say, “It almost sounds too good to be true.” And you know what they say about things that sound to good to be true.
Nevertheless, I wish the project luck.
Your pessimism is noted, Eeyore. So we will see. One thing for sure, if the Dems get power again this will die.
Possibly. But the Dems are irrelevant if other countries more sensible about nuclear power pick up the technology and adopt it for their domestic use.
I’m more of a Piglet than an Eeyore, Richard. I’m convinced that something will happen to stymie this encouraging development. That’s all.
Yes, the politics of nuclear energy is always a problem, it seems.
Great! But how did they get the $.15/kwh to pencil out? Especially with the recharge every 5 years at $1.3M. Help me with the math.
It produces 1MW of power according to the text.
So in a five year span it will produce, 24 x 365 x 5 x 1000 = 43,800,000 kWhrs.
$1.3M / 43,800,000 = 2.9 cents per kWhr.
I guess the rest is capital, factored in over the lifespan of the plant.
Assuming that I haven’t screwed the calculator buttons.
Regardless of what the numbers show, you know that this will get canned by some legislation because it works and is cheap. Probably lock it out because it will be dumping well over a MW of heat on a continuous basis.
Thanks. Twice what they said just from the recharge. Initial cost? Property and install?Maintenance requirements? Generation equipment? Expected lifespan? Starting to look like expensive electricity. I pay $.12/kwh for generation charge and $.41/kwh after taxes, delivery charges, etc.
The cost is trivial where the only possible competition at remote industrial sites is diesel power generation. Lots of areas in North America are off-grid.
How did you get to ‘expensive’ electricity?
2.9c/kWh is much less than $0.12/kWh, ($0.12 is 12 cents, which is more than the 2.9 cents, as calculated).
2.9 cents is also much cheaper than the 12 cents you are paying for generation.
“How did you get to ‘expensive’ electricity?” You’re right, a complete brain fart on my part!
15 cents is expensive in Texas, but very cheap in Hawaii or Fiji, or any place that uses diesel, wind and solar. Every energy source is good some places and expensive other places. This source, which can power 700 or so homes, is ideal for remote or third world locations, but it will not replace grids in developed countries like the USA.
“This source, which can power 700 or so homes, is ideal for remote or third world locations”
A nuclear reactor in places that no one will maintain, and will be vandalized/parted out while in operation. Wonderful idea.
Now, that is fascinating! And shows what can be done if the public and private sector cooperate.
This just seems revolutionary and will change the nature of electrical generation in America.
At least that is what it seems to be to a layman like me.
It is very important in remote locations in the US and Europe and in the third world.
If it is real, and works.. as appears to be the case..
Its the first true SMR !!
Not the first, but they are indeed one of the first true, power-generating micro-reactors. The first SMRs in the world for power generation are the BWRX-300s being built at Darlington in Ontario. they started construction in May 2025.
Certainly a heck of a lot smaller.
Like the CEO said, this may not be the first SMR, but it will be the thousandth. The key here is that he avoided exotic components, nearly everything is off the shelf.
Yeah, let’s drive a nuclear reactor on a mountain road strapped down on pick-up truck. What could possibly go wrong?
A fast scan through the article didn’t turn up anything about security & safety.“It has inherent safety and security and does not require full-time monitoring; it is walk-away safe.”
Was that a real photo or a dummy? Something that small is going run a boiler & steam turbine?
” It can produce one megawatt of power,”
Here’s what a conventional unit looks like: LINK
Steve,
It does not run a boiler or steam turbine. This is solid state. I’m not sure, but this is most likely thermoelectric or thermophotovoltaic (TPV) conversion—paired with a very compact heat‑management loop. Think of it as a nuclear battery, it almost has to use solid state technology since one of its advantages is it is a walk-away technology.
Someone earlier said it sounds too good to be true. I’m in that camp. One megawatt is ~1340 horsepower
The iconic P-51D Mustang produced 1,490 horsepower at 3,000 rpm from its V-12 Merlin engine LINK and went through about a gallon of gas per minute.
When the small reactor topic comes up, I think about the US Navy and its atomic powered submarines and air craft carriers. I think those a bit bigger than that over-sized hot water heater in that pick-up truck.
Pretty sure those sub and ship reactors use a higher grade of uranium than you would want to use for domestic purposes. !
Submarines use uranium enrichment of 90+%. When they refuel, they cut a hole in the ship and replace the entire reactor
Thanks for your support, Steve. There’s something about this that doesn’t quite smell right to me.
From Google’s AI bot:
“Commercial thermoelectric generators (TEGs) typically achieve low conversion efficiencies of 3% to 8%, though advanced lab-scale and hybrid modules using high-entropy half-Heusler alloys or specialized semiconductor combinations can reach experimental efficiencies of 12% to 15% under high temperature gradients.”
Wow! Such low conversion efficiency is sure to make the claimed $0.15 per kWh rate totally unachievable. Moreover, think about the problems of removing something like 85% or more of all of the fission heat energy produced . . . not going to be done by an air fan or by a garden hose connect to one of those pickup truck-transportable small reactors.
Every method of generating electricity carries risks — mining, transport, waste, and operational hazards. What’s often missed is the relative scale of those risks.
The fuel used in these microreactors is low‑enriched uranium oxide, a stable ceramic that isn’t highly radioactive before use and is shipped in sealed assemblies. The U.S. has transported nuclear fuel for more than 50 years without a single radiological injury. Mining impacts are similar to other hard‑rock mining and far smaller than coal mining.
As for cost, nuclear fuel is extraordinarily energy‑dense — millions of times more energy per kilogram than fossil fuels — so a million dollars of fuel can power a 1 MW reactor for years. Most nuclear costs come from construction and regulation, not fuel, and microreactors reduce those dramatically by using factory‑built, standardized designs.
When you look at global data, nuclear has the lowest fatalities per unit of electricity of any major energy source, even including Chernobyl and Fukushima. Microreactors are even safer because they use LEU, operate at low pressure, and have very small inventories of radioactive material.
So yes — the risks exist, as they do for every energy system — but they are small, well‑managed, and far lower than the risks we accept today from coal, gas, and even hydro.
We need energy, one has to weight risks and costs from one source to another.
Since fuel rods in conventional nuclear power plants are 95% renewable from the unspent fuel (Yes, nuclear power should be classified as a renewable power source), is this also calculated in the 5 year fuel costs in these micro reactors or could the cost be even lower?
The U.S. has transported nuclear fuel for more than 50 years
without a single radiological injury.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
In pick-up trucks over two lane mountain roads with out security escorts? Whatever that over sized hot water heater is, it’s got to be more than just that.
Why would you need to heat hot water?
Who said they were planning to ship these in pickup trucks? The article just said it was small enough to do so.
Isn’t one enough?
You have yet to demonstrate that even one is going to happen.
BTW, the picture above is not an actual unit. They haven’t started actually making them yet.
Figure 1. The first Deployable Energy reactor on its way to Idaho National Laboratory for testing.
After two queries to Google AI
From the company’s website –
“Is developing”. Just like Elon Musk is developing self driving automobiles, and the US Department of War is developing plans to ensure that Iran never buys a nuclear weapon from Pakistan, China or North Korea.
I’d be happy to invest someone else’s money, just not mine.
This is just a commercial by Deployable Energy. It presents a pendulum like a whole clock. Very misleading. This “core” will have to be surrounded by a whole factory. BTW, it looks too small to provide one megawatt.
I have to agree, since very few (none?) of the obvious engineering problems with this SMR concept are surfaced in the above article.
Coming next: the TV commercials featuring the Minions trucking and installing
hundredsthousands of these “innovative” reactors around the US from the Deplorable Energy production plants.Interesting. I will wait to see how the testing actually goes, because a bit ‘too good to be true.’ Company’ own information is (to put it mildly) sparse. Way too early for provisional patents to show up at USPTO, so did not even bother to check
1 MWe means cannot be solid state TEG—efficiency only about 8%—so >20MWt, and very unlikely in that small size.
A 1 MWe conventional steam turbogenerator is just under $300k and about 40% efficient. So the Microreactors would be about 2.5MWt. Possible from what the company schematically suggests for BoS.
It might be 1MW at the core but after conversation, about 80kW. Obviously, if true, that wouldn’t be a statistic they’d be making public for obvious reasons.
One thing I caught in the video was that rather than focussing on reaction moderation they focused on shielding. That suggests to me it’s an uncontrolled reaction designed to never increase. And that makes me wonder how the air cooling solution manages without a load. 1MW is hard to dissapate.
It’s a nice little reactor, but you still have to convert the thermal energy into electrical energy, either using a Rankine cycle (water to steam) or a Brayton/Joule cycle (i.e., hot helium to the turbine). So with this mini-reactor, you “only” get a very small, very powerful furnace, and the rest still follows James Watt’s 19th-century principle—only it’s been adapted for the 21st century, using enriched uranium instead of coal!
Or an organic Rankine cycle.
At the risk of sounding cynical, all I see in that photo is a pickup carrying what looks like a large water heater. Is there a working installation of this new technology?
No, like controlled nuclear fusion, it’s being subjected to “laboratory investigation”, but most assuredly commercial development is just 20 years in the future. /sarc
I find it interesting that the Deployable Energy reactor is, per the above article, claimed to be so simple to operate and safe (approaching foolproof), yet the caption of Figure 1 in the article states “The first Deployable Energy reactor on its way to Idaho National Laboratory for testing.”
The Idaho National Laboratory is located on a vast, remote 890-square-mile high-desert site in southeastern Idaho specifically chosen to safely conduct hazardous nuclear, defense, and infrastructure testing away from large population centers.
This is the image on their site on the Technology page:
Ahhh . . . the beauty of a computer-generated marketing-image . . . no need to base such on reality, and probably cost less than $200 in equivalent artist labor to create using CAD software.
I do appreciate the touch of shadowing in the image . . . nicely done.
Well, based on the net down votes I’ve received, I guess I need to provide a bit more information.
1) “Physical protection” shown in cutaway leads one to conclude the unit is planned for more-or-less permanent site installation, not remaining “transportable”.
2) “Physical protection” shown appears to be very tight so as to make re-fueling in five years problematic, even through an overhead access port (not shown).
3) There is no piping or wiring shown running into or out of the “Nuclear Island” so one wonders how waste heat from the microreactor is conveyed to the “Air Cooler” (maybe pipes are buried underground? . . . KA-CHING!). If the only means of extracting electrical power is indeed “solid state” thermoelectrics and the reactor is indeed rated for 1 MWe output as indicated in the above article, then that means about 5.7 MWt has to be conveyed from the “Nuclear Island” and then dissipated to the ambient environment by the “Air Cooler”.
4) One doesn’t even need to do a back-of-the-envelope calculation to realize that the “Air Cooler”, as shown in scale to the asserted size of the microreactor cylinder, is impossibly small to transfer 5.7 MWt to ambient air at temperatures above 0 deg-F. For reference, a typical passenger car radiator dissipates roughly 25 kW to 75 kW of heat during normal highway cruising, so using the most optimistic value (75 kW) dissipating 5.7 MWt would be expected to require around 75 car-size radiators with fans forcing 40-50 mph air flow across the radiators, and that’s without any operating margin. The artist rendering shows only about 24 of such size radiators . . . about 1/3 the minimum needed.
5) It’s a nice touch for the artist to bundle everything else required for the microreactor power plant into the relatively small rectangular volume identified with the cute name “Balance of Plant”. Let’s see, that would contain:
— all plumbing and valving required but not shown elsewhere,
— all instrumentation, all control electronics, backup/emergency batteries, control computer(s), and electrical transformers and other electrics required to connect to the grid at required voltage, frequency and phase matching.
6) It’s not clear if this artist concept considers the need for manned operation or if the microreactor power plant is just going to be left on automatic, but there does not appear to be sufficient height or volume for a manned control office or a maintenance bay, nor are any doors shown.
7) There’s no evidence of electrical lines coming into or going out of the plant.
There are pipes from the core. Here is a screenshot from the video.
Now that’s funny. I enlarged your posted photo and see only two ports (not pipes) on the cylinder in front of all those people. I have to assume one of the two ports is for coolant entering the microreactor body and the only other port would then connect to a single piping run exiting the “core”.
BTW, if one of those ports is indeed the outlet for cooling media (helium or water/steam), it appears to be woefully undersized to carry something like 5.7 MWt of continuous waste heat power away from the reactor.
Oh well, at least the Deployable Energy folks in the photo are smiling.
Not only undersized, they seem awfully thin gauge to be managing multiple MW output assuming they’re pressurised.
Also this:
Comments from the above article’s author state that the Deployable Energy microreactor is going to be using “solid state” conversion (assumed to be based on existing thermoelectric devices) as the primary means of providing that 1 MWe power output.
However, individual semiconductor thermoelectric couples produce only microvolts or millivolts per degree of temperature difference, so commercial modules wire hundreds of these couples in series to boost the final voltage. Even so, the typical voltage output from a commercial thermoelectric generator (TEG) module ranges from 50 millivolts to 10 volts, though individual multi-couple modules or custom setups designed for load matching can reach 12 to 14.4 volts.
So let’s be very generous and say that because of a very large temperature difference that might be established based on the author’s claim that the microreactor might be providing 2,000 deg-C peak temperatures—no discussion whatsoever about TEG semiconductor materials that can survive these high temperatures, but I digress—we might be able to obtain a total TEG stack-of-modules voltage output of, say, 220 vdc. To carry 1 megawatt of DC electricity away from the microreactor at that voltage will require a conductor sized to safely carry 4,550 amps. Something quite a bit larger than the gage of a typical heavy duty extension cord . . . and BTW, copper melts at about 1085 deg-C!
I don’t see any such cabling exiting the microreactor in any photo or artist illustration of the “device”. That might be a problem.
I think it’s pretty obvious what we’re being shown is the core itself and that the pipes will transfer whatever fluid is used to another mechanism to convert the heat to power.
Successful solid state seems highly unlikely to me.
In the video one claim was they were targeting marine and marine adjacent so that makes me think water is necessary for cooling even if the primary fluid directly used is helium.
Well, there goes any use of super-high reactor temperatures (~2000 deg-C) to achieve peak power from the “solid state” thermoelectric modules . . . unless Deployable Energy has found a method of piping 2000 deg-C steam or helium over tens of feet at some relatively high pressure level.
That practical technology would be much more valuable than just another nuclear microreactor concept.
Harken back to the concept illustration posted by Jeff Alberts above: see the relatively large “Air Cooler”?
The whole thing looks implausible to me as described in the OP. Very much a “too good to be true”.
From the above article:
“They recently signed a 145-billion-dollar contract for three GW of cumulative clean nuclear power deployments with Gridmarket.”
Hmmmm . . . that works out to an average net investment cost of about $48.3 billion per GW, or about $1,100 per kWh, assuming 24/7/365 max power output continuously for five years. If the output electricity is really going to be sold at $0.15 per kWh, that’s a terrible ROI and Gridmarket is going to lose a huge amount of money on the deal.
Even if the article had a “typo” and the Gridmarket deal was only $145 million, the average net cost would still be $1.10 per kWh, or about 7 times the five year-income of electricity sold at this price point. Very few investors think waiting more than 35 years to “break even” (especially considering the added $1.3 million cost of refueling the reactor every five years), would be a good deal.
Separately, since the article states that these “portable” modular reactors will be using standard “reactor grade” enriched uranium oxide, it can be concluded that the spent nuclear fuel at the end of five years will consist of the typical dangerous, highly radioactive by-products that result from the fission reactions in typical nuclear power plants that produced the thermal power from the reactor . . . you know, SNF elements like Iodine-131, Xenon-135, Cesium-137, Strontium-90, and Plutonium-239.
Do we really want the possession and responsibility for storage/disposal (ha!) of these SNF waste products spread across the USA and in the hands of commercial businesses? Really?
Of course, there is no mention whatsoever of this “issue” in the above article.
Bottom line: there are manifold, good engineering and safety reasons that the USA currently does not have small nuclear reactors “in the commercial nuclear space”.
15 cents per kwh isn’t very cheap, that’s higher than the PG&E generation rate.
The average cost of residential electricity in California is approximately 37 cents per kWh. And going up.
The average cost of residential electricity in the United States is about 18.4 cents per kWh. And going up.
The Kaleidos 1 MWe microreactor now under development by Radiant Energy in El Segundo is a strong competitor in the microreactor market.
The first complete unit has been shipped to the US-DOE DOME facility in Idaho for a year of full power testing.
https://www.radiantnuclear.com/blog/kaleidos-shipped/
Radiant has a contract with the US Air Force to deliver a fully operational Kaleidos 1 MWe microreactor to an air base in 2028.
Radiant in Deal to Deliver Its Microreactor to USAF
Radiant will be constructing a factory in Oak Ridge Tennessee to manufacture their microreator power units.
Per Google AI, the expected capital cost for a Radiant Kaleidos 1 MWe microreactor is targeted at $40 to $60 million per unit once full production scale (50 units per year) is reached at their planned Oak Ridge factory.
Early production units are estimated to cost between $60 and $100 million. TRISO fuel and specialized high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) comprise a substantial portion of the microreactor’s baseline economics.
Developers of larger SMRs in the 20 MWe to 300 MWe range are highly skeptical of the economics of 1 MWe microreactors for anything other than military use.
What about the use of the microreactors for data centers?
Natural gas has most of the market for data center new-build power supplies locked up.
It’s hard to see how $40 million for a 1 MWe microreactor could be justified at $40,000 nominal capital cost per kilowatt when a 20 MWe Last Energy system serving several co-located data centers could be bought for possibly $12,000 or possibly even less per kilowatt when full rate production for a Last Energy reactor is eventually reached.
The Kaleidos 1 MWe microreactor now under development by Radiant Energy in El Segundo is a strong competitor in the
microreactorPowerPoint presentation market.It’s hard to see
how $40 million for a 1 MWe microreactor could be justified at $40,000 nominal capital cost per kilowatt when a 20 MWe Last Energy system serving several co-located data centers could be bought for possibly $12,000 or possibly even less per kilowatt when full rate production for a Last Energy reactor is eventually reachedthe future.The Kaleidos prototype is now in Idaho and will be going critical in a few months. If the prototype meets performance spec, the US military will be buying some number of them starting in 2028.
Once again, we see that governments are a primary customer for nuclear reactors for the energy reliability and security benefits nuclear offers.
Will commercial customers be buying any of these Kaleidos 1 MWe reactor/generator units?
I’m personally skeptical about that, because it’s a lot less expensive to invest in a gas-fired or diesel-fired solution for small-volume energy needs.
Well, not exactly.
It is true that the US Navy has a 70+ history of successfully operating small nuclear reactors on submarines and aircraft carriers since its first vessel to use such in January 1955. But it is also true that commercial, non-military utility companies have a 69 year history of operating rather large nuclear power plants since the first one in December 1957.
The United States currently has 57 operating commercial nuclear power plants with a total of 96 nuclear reactors spread across 28 states.
However, there have been no small nuclear reactors in commercial operation in the US to date.
Russia and China as the only countries currently operating commercial SMRs, and who knows how well those have turned out financially, reliability or safety-wise, but for sure they haven’t revolutionized nuclear power plant technology in those countries, which still rely on classic larger fusion reactors (~ 1 GWe output power each) for the majority of their nuclear-sourced electrical energy needs.
I want one.
More good news.
Interesting.
Rolls-Royce of England is interested in making reactors for other uses, based on nuclear submarine technology which aims for 30 years but trying to extend to 60 years than scrap instead of refuelling.
Note cost of uranium input, is enrichment level low compared to other nuclear reactors.
A question is life of this low cost design. (You say refuelling every five years. Radiation can affect materials.)
Compact nuclear reactors for submarines and aircraft carriers are only made possible by the immediate availability of nearly infinite quantities of ocean water close to the reactor and the steam turbine power cycle’s condenser. You simply cannot get this concentration of thermal cooling on land- or air-applications of SMRs.
Large (~ 1 GWe) land-based nuclear power plants operate at an overall thermal-to-electrical power conversion efficiency of about 35%. Because inefficiency of thermal power systems tends to scale inversely with the volume to surface area ratio (1/d, where d is the characteristic physical dimension), compact nuclear reactors using a Rankine (e.g., steam turbine) power cycle are expected to be much less efficient.
This is confirmed by this response from Google’s AI bot when queried on the subject (my bold emphasis added):
“The typical thermal-to-electric conversion efficiency of U.S. Navy nuclear power plants is relatively low, generally falling in the 15% to 22% range for submarine propulsion reactors, which is lower than commercial nuclear plants (around 33%) due to stringent space limits, compact core designs, and variable power demands.”
I’ve suggested burying a nuclear reactor under park in neighbourhood to serve the area.
Putting cat among pigeons I may be. :-o)
Awaiting the first Mr. Fusion! 🙂