A growing niche of low-power nuclear reactors:

Hyperion Power Generation plans to build a small reactor manufacturing plant in the United Kingdom within the next two years. The firm says it plans to use the existing UK supply chain to build its 70MWt (27MWe), self-regulating reactor and that the UK will be its ‘launch pad’ for the European market.

“We’ve got so much demand that we need to go ahead and start planning our manufacturing facilities,” he [John (Grizz) Deal] said.

“We have customer commitments for over a hundred units already. We’re going to be very busy! In fact, we’re now scheduling deliveries out to 2018-2020 even though we expect to go to market in the 2013-2014 timeframe.”

The reactor looks like an electric battery on steroids: you plug it in, run for 5-7 years, and then replace with another one, if necessary.

tags: source, network, system, energy, growth