Gas turbine on and off to run it only at high efficiency. The emergence of the continuously variable transmission may also alleviate the responsiveness problem. Turbines have historically been more expensive to produce than piston engines, though this is partly because piston engines have been mass-produced in huge quantities for decades, while small gas turbine engines are rarities; however, turbines are mass-produced in the closely related form of the turbocharger. The turbocharger is basically a compact and simple free shaft radial gas turbine which is driven by the piston engine's exhaust gas. The centripetal turbine wheel drives a centrifugal compressor wheel through
Gas turbine modular helium reactor of a coolant failure. The Gas Turbine Modular Helium Reactor utilizes the Brayton cycle turbine arrangement, which gives it an efficiency of up to 48% – higher than any other reactor, as of 1995. Commercial light water reactors (LWRs) generally use the Rankine cycle, which is what coal-fired power plants use. Commercial LWRs average 32% efficiency, again as of 1995. In 2010 General Atomics conceptualized a new reactor that utilizes the power conversion features of the GT-MHR, the Energy Multiplier Module (EM2). The EM2 uses fast neutrons and is a gas-cooled fast reactor, enabling it to reduce nuclear waste considerably