Power up Earth while going to Mars

Imagine a small greenhouse-sized nuclear reactor in your own backyard, making you - and your whole block! - independent from other energy sources forever. Further: the reactor can be delivered to your house by truck and up and running no later than the next day. (Some say "in hours", but i doubt it.)

Radiant Nuclear is developing a microreactor that they call the "world's first portable, zero-emissions?power source."

The idea for the microreactor, called Kaleidos, stems from CEO Doug Bernauer's time working at SpaceX, where he was tasked with devising methods for producing enough power on Mars to allow future colonies to survive and also travel between Earth and the red planet. Source: nterestingengineering.com

Bernauer found that his work could also be applied on Earth to bring power to?remote communities and military bases, and could also be used as an easily deployable fleet of reactors for populated areas.

According to Radiant, the Kaleidos — shown in the video above — will output more than 1MW, which is enough to power about 1,000 homes for up to eight years. It uses TRISO fuels and helium coolant instead of water, both of which should make the microreactor safer than traditional nuclear reactors.

Doug Bernauer got the idea from a project he worked on while at SpaceX: supplying power to a human colony on Mars. The challenge was that it had to sustain the facilities on the ground and refuel spaceships that could travel back and forth between Earth and the Red Planet. Since the Sun was not a good enough solution, nuclear energy came up. But, until humankind reaches that stage, we can successfully use that invention on our Blue Planet. With $10 in million funding from?Union Square Ventures, Radiant Nuclear is on its way to building the world's first portable, zero-emissions power source. The prototype could begin the testing stage in five years. Source: autoevolution.com

The Kaleidos reactor's 1MW output – shown in the video simulation above — can cover the needs of 1,000 homes for up to eight years. Thanks to high-tech materials and out-of-this-world engineering, the powerplant is safer than the existing water-cooled atomic generators.

So the next time you find someone laughing about mans plans to go to Mars, here is yet another example for you to use, on how the knowledge we are gathering on the way up there, creates huge benefits among us earthlings.

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