The USSR did it first! No, really. There was a mobile power plant: Pamir-630D ( https://imgur.com/a/rCexHAA ).

It was even deployed to provide power to a remote Arctic outpost. It had to use an exotic coolant (basically, a rocket oxidizer) to make it work, and it had to be placed far away from anything else. The shielding was not enough to bring down the gamma radiation to a safe level when the reactor was active.

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actinium226 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Not sure about who was first but McMurdo station in Antarctica was for a time powered by a nuclear reactor almost identical in power to the one being discussed here: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2014/ph241/reid2/

	▲	cyberax 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		D'oh. Thanks! I forgot about it, because it was delivered by a plane, not a truck.

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AngryData 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Neat, I never heard of that! Im surprised there isn't even an english wiki page for it, I had to translate russian wikipedia and even that was a bit limited in information to satisfy my curiosity so ill have to look at other sources.

	▲	cyberax 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I actually was mistaken. The photo is from an earlier project: TES-3, from 1960. It was a system with 4 mobile units and a reactor that needed to be buried for shielding. https://www.ixbt.com/live/offtopic/pervaya-v-mire-peredvizhn... (German Wiki also has an article with an image: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/TES-3 ). I remember reading about it in an encyclopedia as a child.