Cost is not only relevant, it's paramount. Efficiency is only important insofar as it affects overall cost.

Diesel generators have the advantage of being very cheap -- an order of magnitude cheaper than NPPs per unit power output -- and of having much of their total cost being fuel cost, so they can operate at lower capacity factor. But even so, we don't see large power plants composed of arrays of diesel microgenerators.

(The solution for current higher capacity factor diesel users, like say remote operation at mines, would be to supplement them with renewables and storage to reduce fuel costs. This is already happening.)

A significant problem with any small power plant is fixed costs. A 1 MW(e) plant (Antares is said to be between 100 kW(e) and 1 MW(e)) making power at 90% capacity factor and selling at $0.05/kWh will gross about $400K/year. A single full time employee, like a security guard, will cost a good chunk of that.

> Cost is not only relevant, it's paramount. Efficiency is only important insofar as it affects overall cost.

Oh sorry, I thought you were talking about efficiency. Ok, what is the cost is for these plants?

> A single full time employee, like a security guard, will cost a good chunk of that.

I dunno, a 1MW nuclear plant could end up being pretty small. It might easily be economic to install them places that already have security guards.