Obama budget includes modular nuclear reactors

New York Times : To help the Department of Energy meet a federal target for reducing its carbon dioxide emissions, the Obama administration’s 2012 budget proposal will include a request for money to help develop small “modular” nuclear reactors, writes Matthew Wald for the New York Times. The reactors, which would supply electricity to a government lab, would be built almost entirely in a factory and trucked to a site, like modular homes. The DOE, like other federal agencies, is required by an executive order to reduce its carbon footprint by 28% by 2020. A longer-term goal, however, is to foster assembly-line production of the small reactors at a lower cost than construction of conventional reactors.