[Dead Dog]

The way to implement these is to connect them to the (or a )grid. Distributed power production.

It would make the national infrastructure incredibly robust. If done right it would make entire communities self sufficient in terms of sanitation, water processing, ad even food. In the case of a nuclear attack, we wouldn't’t see the wide spread disease, starvation, and civil carnage we will now see with centralized power production.

Power production, if managed right, is the key to clean water and food production in urban areas.

[slowhandluke]

Building a two-way power distribution network for lots of sources and lots of sinks won't be cheap. My guess is that it would at least double the total cost. That's one of the knocks against windmills and solar, the power flow is weak and distributed and needs a lot of transmission infrastructure. You would need a more complex transmission system than we have today, and not get the economy of scale we have with the current large generating plants.

However, it could be robust. I do doubt that more than a few politicians have the foresight to keep an expensive interconnect network up and running from one hurricane season to the next.

It could help in rural areas, if it eliminated the connection to the larger network. It might be cheaper to put up two of these, than have a 100 mile transmission line.

I don't think there's a clear answer to how to use these until some engineering groups runs the numbers on total cost of ownership.

Personally, I'd vote against these unless they were run on some fuel that doesn't generate bomb material. Once upon a time I read an article or book talking about a thorium cycle reactor that had such a benefit. Sorry, but I haven't been able to track down the reference recently.