Microreactors that ship in containers
A handful of designs are small enough to travel on a truck. Project Pele ships in four standard ISO containers and is designed to be running within days of arrival; Kaleidos fits inside one. At 1 to 2 MWe these are roughly a thousandth of a large reactor — and that is the point. They are not competing with power stations. They are competing with diesel generators.
Remote mines, Arctic communities, island grids, disaster relief and forward military bases all run on diesel that has to be flown or shipped in, often at several times the delivered cost of grid power. A reactor that arrives on a truck, runs for years without refuelling and leaves on the same truck is aimed at that market — not at replacing a gigawatt station. Judge them against the cost of diesel in the Arctic, not against the cost of grid electricity.
| Design | Developer | MWe | Form factor | Regulatory position | Fuel |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Project Pele | BWX Technologies | 1.5 | Four ISO shipping containers, transportable by truck, rail, ship or C-17 | Under construction | HALEU |
| Aurora | Oklo Inc. | 15 | Factory-built powerhouse delivered to site | Under review | HALEU |
| Kaleidos | — | 1.2 | Fits inside a standard ISO shipping container | Pre-application | HALEU |
| eVinci | Westinghouse Electric Company | 5 | Road-transportable module; Westinghouse describes it as shipping largely assembled and installing in days | Pre-application | HALEU |
| Aalo-1 | — | 10 | Factory-built modular unit | Pre-application | HALEU |
| BANR | BWX Technologies | 17 | Transportable microreactor, derived from BWXT's naval and Project Pele work | Pre-application | HALEU |
The two things to check before believing a date
First, whether it is licensed or authorised. Project Pele and Kaleidos are approved by the Department of Defense and Department of Energy as prototypes on government sites. That is a genuine achievement, and it is not an NRC commercial licence. A microreactor running at Idaho National Laboratory does not mean one can be sold to a mine in Alaska.
Second, the fuel. 6 of 6 of these need HALEU, most of them as TRISO particles. Western HALEU production is a few hundred kilograms a year, and the TRISO plants that would turn it into fuel are dated 2028 and later. The reactors are small, but their fuel comes from the same very small pipe as everything else on the SMR tracker.