Nukes Get Small

Big nuclear power plants dominate the headlines and the debate. These projects, involving reactors that produce thousands of megawatts of electric power and requiring many billions of investment dollars, are hotly debated due to their huge costs and concerns about nuclear proliferation. Opponents also question their safety and point to the problem of long-term waste disposal.

But entrepreneurs are now developing small nuclear reactors that could ultimately become just as important as their bigger, more famous counterparts. These micro-nukes produce a small fraction of the power that their bigger cousins do, but they may have applications in far more locations, particularly in remote areas where electricity is prohibitively expensive. The small reactors may also be used for temporary power production, or at locations like military bases that need highly reliable electric power.

Small reactors could be extraordinarily useful in both the upstream and downstream sectors of the oil industry. In the upstream, a small reactor would be highly valuable for use in oil sands, heavy oil, or oil shale projects that consume huge quantities of natural gas to produce the steam needed to process the bitumen, heavy oil, or shale. The small reactor could also be used in refineries, which must burn natural gas or other hydrocarbons to produce steam for various processes. Further, the small reactors can be ganged, so they could be scaled up to provide power for small cities that don