These SMRs are designed to be pre-assembled in a factory and shipped to location.  They would range in size from 50 MW units to 300 MW units.

These plants could come on line relatively quickly, providing a “carbon free” source of cheap, domestic electrical power that would benefit American homeowners, business owners and provide a competitive edge to US manufacturers.

Clean and safe nuclear power is supported as the “green option” by serious leaders of the environmental movement, including Gaia theorist James Lovelock, Greenpeace cofounder Patrick Moore, and Britain’s Bishop Hugh Montefiore, a longtime board member of Friends of the Earth.

Of course, there are uneducated watermelon groups opposing this step toward clean, American engergy indepence, including the obviously confused “Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.”

The world’s first floating nuclear power plant was built in the early 1960s by the United States Army Corps of Engineers. It was the MH-1A Sturgis, a converted WWII Liberty ship.  The BBC falsely reported that the Russians were building the first floating nuclear power plant back in 2006, and other news agencies are still repeating their mistake.

A recent Gallup Poll shows a record 59% of Americans favor nuclear energy.

Dr. Pournelle nailed the truth of Nuclear Engergy:

I have to say it again: cheap energy will cause a boom. The only cheap energy I know of is nuclear. Three Hundred Billion bucks in nuclear power will do wonders for the economy. We build 100 1000 MegaWatt nuclear power plants — they will cost no more than 2 billion each and my guess is that the average cost will be closer to 1 billion each (that is the first one costs about 20 billion and the 100th costs about 800 million). The rest of the money goes to prizes and X projects to convert electricity into mobility.

Expanded Nuclear Power is the only practical way to supply the level of electrical power needed to support wide spread use of electric and plug in hybrid electric cars.

Also posted at the Urbin Report.

These new entries are still “Concept Cars,” so I’m taking their “late 2010″ release date with a chunk of salt.

Keep in mind that introducing a lot of plug in hybrids or pure electric cars into the market is either going to require new sources of power (home based cheap solar and industrial scale Nuclear for example) or some serious inovations in electrical grid management.

Plans for smaller nuclear reactors, which can be US built, have been submitted to the NRC for approval.

These small plants, which produce no greenhouse gases, are designed to produce 45-megawatts of power with a very small footprint. The unit is less than 70 feet long and the containment vessel is only 14 feet in diameter.

These can be easily placed in remote areas that currently use diesel generators and would be useful in more urban areas, such as California and the Northeast, to reduce dependence on plants that burn coal, oil and natural gas.