It is an idea that may seem like science fiction: every new home with a power plant of its own, maybe even a nuclear plant. Each house might or might not be connected to a grid. This may have been a fancy in old comic books or in Popular Mechanics, but could be the near future.
In that kind of future, there would be much less broad a danger from storms or earthquakes that knock out power for whole cities and where disrupted power lines ignite ruinous fires. If whole cities or even neighborhoods were powered by numerous individual energy plants, terrorist attacks on the power grid would become much less threatening. Even if only a fraction of homes and office buildings and schools were independently powered, those could serve as refuges for the rest of the community in natural or man made catastrophes.
Aesthetically, the city where tiny power plants in each house, or even in each neighborhood, largely obviated the need for a power grid, would be a city with far fewer unsightly power poles and lines. Like the old rooftop TV antennae that made cities skyscapes so ugly in the days before cable, the poles and wires that have blighted cities for a hundred years don't enter our consciousness. But, when they are gone, as in towns now that have placed their power lines underground, one will notice a huge improvement.
The safe, quiet, small home power plant of which I rhapsodize is not just a dream, any more than a number of other appliances that have been introduced over the years. (Imagine explaining a vacuum cleaner to a housekeeper with a broom in 1850.) Indeed, this innovation may be closer than one thinks, as this article about Bloom Energy suggests. (You may also want to watch this 60 Minutes segment on the "Bloom Box".)
