A decade after the use of atomic bombs, world leaders were anxious to show how atomic energy could be used for peaceful purposes. One such application developed by scientists and engineers involved something called the "atomic boiler".
It was to be a small nuclear reactor, with enough fuel to run for 6 years, occupying a space the size of 1-2 large storage batteries. It would be turned on at its manufacturing point and installed in homes to provide space heating, hot water and air conditioning --- what we would call today, a triple appliance. After its allotted run time of 6 years, the unit would be replaced by a new one. Clearly, this vision of atomic power was one of distributed generation, probably the first case of it in the literature. No energy storage, just plentiful energy on demand as needed.
Presumably, the atomic boiler would be "sunk" into the basement of a home and kept away from all other things, especially humans, treated like a special kind of "fire", like one would find in a boiler/furnace or water heater, only more intense. I wonder how this would have affected the impact of burning fossil fuels in the home [i.e. coal, oil, or natural gas; and the resulting air pollution]. One can even envision reactors made to operate on nuclear waste byproducts [from recycling of spent nuclear fuels] to get the most out of domestic nuclear resources.
Electricity was generated for the first time by a nuclear reactor on December 20, 1951, at the EBR-I experimental station near Arco, Idaho, which initially produced about 100 kW. In 1953, American President Dwight Eisenhower gave his "Atoms for Peace" speech at the United Nations, emphasizing the need to develop "peaceful" uses of nuclear power quickly. This was followed by the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 which allowed rapid declassification of U.S. reactor technology and encouraged development by the private sector. From my research into atomic boilers, this concept seems to have been popular around 1955.
Talk to you again soon...
Harry