The hottest portable gadget released this holiday season isn’t Amazon.com’s new e-book, the Kindle. It’s a nuclear reactor. Depending on whom you talk to, the portable nuclear reactor is either the most significant development in energy technology since the invention of the wind turbine, or it’s a harbinger of the apocalypse.
The portable nuke is the brainchild of Hyperion Power Generation, a company created last month to bring nuclear technology into the private sector, Dave Maass writes for the Santa Fe Reporter. Hyperion is promoting the portable nuclear reactor as a means of ending dependency on fossil fuel and abolishing poverty in the developing world. Maass reports that Hyperion’s claims have been met with considerable skepticism. * Los Alamos Study Group Executive Director Greg Mello says, “This whole idea is loony and not worthy of too much attention,”
—Morgan Winters
* This article has been amended to properly source the originally reported material.
