But while several said the technology sounds promising, they note that the nuclear power industry has a history of making bold claims it couldn't back up.
"Back in the 1950s, they said (nuclear power) would be too cheap to meter," said Norm Buske, director of the Seattle-based organization The RadioActive Campaign.
No one in the Nuclear industry said that in the 50s or at any other time. That quote came out of The New York Times (big surprise) supposidly quoting some Army General who if he believed that didn't know his a** from a hole in the ground. Anyone with any knowledge would never say that. The challenge in the 50s was to figure out how to make nuclear even remotely competitive with conventional generation. First of all, more than half of the investment in a nuclear plant is the same investment in virtually identical equipment as a conventional plant. (Same is true with this plant.) And the realization came about relatively early that the only way to make it competitive was to "Size Up" the plants beyond the MW ratings of the typical fossil-fired boiler of that day in order to generate enough MW to cover the capital costs of the nuclear portion. i.e. Only big would work and no one knew exactly how big you could make a steam turbine then. They succeded, however, and made nuclear even more efficient than fossil, but back in the 50s, no one involved took that hope for granted and absolutly no one involved thought it would ever be free.
As to this reactor, I'll take a look. At the costs shown here, remote generation in places where fuel costs are super high is the only possibility it has for application. I doubt that the "reactor" itself will ever be licensed in the US or any other country without full time, around the clock reactor operators, as the article suggests. Those guys don't come cheep either.