The future of nuclear reactors: "Micro" reactors?
A company called Radiant is developing a "portable" (but is it really going to get moved around after the initial installation? I think maybe "prefabricated" is a more accurate term) nuclear reactor. Small reactors have already been made for nuclear submarines, so why not civilian use?
Their reactor uses helium instead of water because, they say, helium doesn't become radioactive when exposed to radiation in the same way water/steam does. If there is an accident and all the coolant is released, it won't be radioactive, and won't fill the surroundings with radioactive pollutant.
The reactor is designed so that outside a nearby fence, radiation levels will be low enough to put a sidewalk or a McDonald's.
One unique thing about their design approach is they created a software model of the reactor and it's physics, and use it to test the reactor's control system against failures. So for example, you can click a button on a screen, and that will cause a component to fail in the simulation. Then you can see if the control system handles the failure correctly. Using this approach they are working on getting the control system to correctly handle every imaginable failure. They make sure that in shutdown scenarios the reactor will always shut down safely.
The future of nuclear = small, mobile, microreactors | Radiant - S3
