Mini-Nukes?

Morning Edition:

The entire reactor — the core, the cooling system, everything — is self-contained in this rocket-shaped steel cylinder. The industry says that makes it safer. And the reactors will be small enough to build in a factory and ship on trucks, like prefabricated houses. They'll generate about one-tenth the power of a typical nuclear power plant.
Assistant Energy Secretary Pete Lyons sees promise that goes beyond a new energy gadget. He sees jobs.
"One of the features of these small reactors is that they can be entirely manufactured here in the United States," Lyons said. "They can literally be made in the USA. With the large plants, that's simply physically impossible."
Lyons pictures churning reactors out in factories, shipping them to utilities to replace aging coal plants or selling them to developing countries — which can't afford a full-scale $15 billion nuclear plant.
"We are trying to jump-start a new U.S. industry," he says. "That's my goal: a U.S. industry, U.S. jobs, clean energy."
In November, the Energy Department invested in Babcock & Wilcox mPower, the nuclear company that built the prototype in Virginia. In total, the government plans to invest more than $400 million. Industry officials like B&W mPower President Chris Mowry say the launch funding is to get off the ground, but ultimately the reactors need to be mass-produced.
"MPower is not going to be measured in terms of success in terms of building tens of these things, but in terms of hundreds of these things," Mowry says. "We're not trying to build a Rolls Royce; we're trying to build a Ford."

I'm kind of torn on this.  I like the idea of smaller, more decentralized power plants, but mini-nuclear plants definitely have their downsides.  If you've got hundreds or thousands of these, you are nearly bound to have a meltdown somewhere.  However, I would think you could do something along the lines of a Navy reactor, which would  be fairly safe and manageable.  I don't know if thorium or some other technology would be feasible, but considering how screwed we are going to be with the climate, we may have to go somewhere down this road.