Next up for nuclear power: small, transportable and made in a factory near Pittsburgh

A 12-foot-tall slice into the dark gray core of a model nuclear microreactor looms on the shop floor of the new Westinghouse Electric Company factory in Etna. It’s dotted with blank holes missing the control drums to control the rate of the reaction, shutdown rods to bring the nuclear chain reaction to a halt and an array of thin heat pipes to cool the heat produced from the fuel and transfer it to an open-air process that turns the fuel into power. Once assembled, the entire nuclear reactor would fit on the back of a semi-truck.