What China is doing.  Source:  Chinese Pebble Bed Reactor Progress Presentation, May, 2007 .pdf  (4.35 meg)

TRISO Pebble.  The first commercial-scale plant (HTR-PM) in China.  Will make use of indirect cycle, steam turbine systems.  The HTR-PM features two 250 MW (thermal) reactor modules and a 210 MWe steam turbine-generator set.

The Chinese recently developed the power plant shown below.   It is identical to the world's thousands of coal-burning power plants, except in this case the steam is produced by a small pebble bed nuclear reactor - NOT COAL.  (That's very important.)

Therefore, there is no technical reason why EXISTING coal-burning steam power plants could not also be converted to run on steam produced by small pebble bed reactors - NOT COAL.    This alone will stop 70% of Global Warming's yearly advance.

Chinese HTR-PM Steam/Pebble Basic Component Layout (May, 2007)
At coal's 2 lb of CO2 per kilowatt-hour (EIA), this reactor will avoid making 2,400 tons of CO2 every 24 hours or almost one million tons of CO2 every year.  Small, as reactors go, the HTR-PM reactor is designed to drive a standard 100 MWe (megawatt-electrical) power plant steam turbine.  As of July, 2008, carbon uncertainties have driven new coal-burning power plant costs to $3.50 per watt to construct (Synapse Energy Economics, Inc.).  This reactor, which is basically a 20 foot diameter, 80 foot high, sheet metal silo filled with 1,000 tons of $2,500 per ton graphite, plus the new water heater, steam generator, and piping, shouldn't cost $100 million ($1 per watt) installed and running.  Heck, a US built 25 MWe Hyperion TRIGA-like reactor currently has a street price of 25 million.  A doubling of Hyperion's price might bring a quadrupling of MWe.