[dietr1ch]

It also means that at the local scale it might be better to distribute steam. Think about future residential nuclear plants. It might not be worth investing into steam distribution on top of electrical as electrical is more flexible, but there might be steam that's residue otherwise that could be used on heating.

[abeppu]

> future residential nuclear plants

What does this mean? Are you imagining a future where individual houses have their own nuclear plants? Or where nuclear plant workers live on-site?

I'm get the argument that we should have more nuclear power, and that some future reactors may be small, but I don't understand the expectation that they would be close enough to residences to pipe steam.

[dietr1ch]

There has been a couple small scale nuclear power projects for a while now,

- https://newatlas.com/energy/oklo-aurora-nuclear-microreactor... - https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a33896110/tiny-nucl... - https://www.nuscalepower.com/products/nuscale-power-module

They target from home to residential scale. I hope they are eventually a thing.

[wafflemaker]

In many places in the world people don't live on ranches or in 1000 m² houses, but in 80-150 m² twin houses or even flats.

In such tighter conditions, you can easily have enough inhabitants per km² that it would justify building small mobile nuclear reactors.

Who would like to live next to a reactor if it can melt down? Well, you have reactors using fuel pellets locked in marbles that due to their diameter can never meltdown.