A Portable Nuclear Reactor Cost Competitive wth Natural Gas

We've looked at Gen4 Energy, Inc (formerly Hyperion Power) and their trailer-sized nukes which the Department of Energy recently funded for research at Savannah River.
Here's another of the Small Modular Reactor competitors, via MIT's Technology Review:

A Nuclear Reactor Competitive with Natural Gas

General Atomics has applied for DOE funds to commercialize a nuclear reactor that could lower electricity costs by 40 percent. 

A novel type of reactor could cut the cost of nuclear power by as much as 40 percent, making it far more competitive with fossil-fuel power plants. Designed by General Atomics, a San Diego–based company, the reactor could also be safer than existing reactors and reduce nuclear waste by 80 percent.

General Atomics has been working on the reactor for five years. Now it is trying to win several hundred million dollars in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, which the company says would be crucial to commercializing the technology. At least one other new design aims to substantially reduce the cost of nuclear power, but it’s from a startup with limited funding (see “Safer Nuclear Power, at Half the Price”).

In the United States, where natural gas is cheap, the main thing keeping utilities from building nuclear plants is their expense. While some other new reactor designs lower the up-front cost of nuclear power, they don’t necessarily lower electricity costs (see “Can Small Reactors Ignite a Nuclear Renaissance?”). Estimates from the Energy Information Administration suggest that if the General Atomics design cuts the cost of electricity by 40 percent as the company claims, new nuclear power plants would be economically competitive with natural-gas plants.

John Parmentola, senior vice president of the Energy Group at General Atomics, says the new reactor will be safer than many conventional ones. In the case of a power failure, it is designed to shut down and cool off without the need to continuously pump in coolant. This is accomplished in part by using ceramics that can withstand very high temperatures without melting....MORE

Here's the hometown newspaper, the San Diego Union-Tribune:

Smaller, transportable nuclear reactor

Imagine a nuclear reactor the size of a school bus, built on an assembly line and delivered to operators on a flatbed truck.

This is General Atomics’ vision of a safer, more efficient fission machine that could go 30 years without refueling and reduce daunting startup and equipment costs that have plagued plants like the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

G.A., as it’s known in the business, believes it can deliver such a reactor and is jockeying to win some of the $452 million in development money being handed out by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Getting there would mean prying a raft of researchers and safety regulators away from a lifetime of work refining the dominant nuclear technology, water-cooled reactors that use steam to drive turbines and generate electricity.

“There are times in human history where technologies come along that have the potential of changing the game,” says John Parmentola, senior vice president at G.A.’s Energy and Advance Concepts Group. “The Department of Energy has a choice: It can either continue to fund technology that hasn’t changed very much in 50 years or it can take a bold step to a possible new path to nuclear energy. That is a major decision point.”...MORE