| ▲ | thelastgallon 4 days ago |
| I think the administration's energy density should be extended for all things. Lets take transportation: Can't use federal lands, waterways, airspace or highways unless the airplanes, trains, ships, trucks and cars are powered by the highest energy density (nuclear). Also, anything that uses airwaves: So, nuclear powered phones, watches, airtags. This would be the biggest breakthrough for humanity. We have nuclear powered submarines but miniaturization of nuclear stalled since then. |
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| ▲ | jijijijij 4 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| This. Nobody is free, until everybody got a thermonuclear warhead. I love the way cars explode in Fallout. I mean, random car crashes have historically been the epitome of excitement, 4k war footage made me pretty indifferent towards bloody windshields and burnt out station wagons. I really think, the intensity of an unexpected fission event projecting its authority through my eyelids could make me feel something again. |
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| ▲ | nickff 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Nuclear submarines were developed at about the same time as civil nuclear power plants (and you could actually argue they were developed earlier or reached maturity earlier). Nuclear submarine power was a sort of ‘killer app’ for nuclear power, rather than a derivative of civil nuclear power stations. |
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| ▲ | TheDong 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Most of the things you cite, like phones, cars, airtags, can already be powered just off batteries and the electric grid, so the actual source of the energy is already abstracted away. A large-scale nuclear plant will be way more efficient than a bunch of mini-plants, so having battery electric cars + nuclear power plants already gives you nuclear powered cars without even having to invent anything new. We only need to focus on fuel generation (power plants), and the small number of remaining places that don't just take power from the grid (planes, ships, other things that have their own fuel/generator on board). |
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| ▲ | jauntywundrkind 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Looking forward to the DoT getting in on this. Cars have to go! Busses trains and bikes only! No other mode of transit can be funded, not dense enough! |
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| ▲ | mrDmrTmrJ 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| We control nuclear proliferation by making enriched uranium (U235) very, very hard to acquire. While I'd love to see more nuclear reactors in our society. The "nuclear everything" argument breaks a core tenant of US national security policy, making U235 very hard to get. |
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| ▲ | thephyber 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Why did you interpret your parent as is they were serious about putting nuclear power in every device? It was extremely clear to me that it was a comment to show the stupidity of the admin insisting that energy density was the right/only heuristic for evaluating which fuel sources to use/support. | |
| ▲ | jijijijij 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Joking aside, I think small nuclear power sources tend to use much, much more problematic stuff than enriched uranium. Stuff that’s producing enough thermal energy through natural decay, rather than criticality in a reactor. You know, the Mars rover‘s pictures are censored in some areas… that’s where the radioisotope batteries are located. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_battery Proper reactors are impractical scaled down, as far as I know. Inside a large submarine or aircraft carrier is probably the smallest practical scale for a reactor and I bet there is a ton of trade-offs. | | |
| ▲ | dragonwriter 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | >Joking aside, I think small nuclear power sources tend to use much, much more problematic stuff than enriched uranium. The rover ones use Pu-238. > You know, the Mars rover‘s pictures are censored in some areas… that’s where the radioisotope batteries are located. The Curiosity and Perserverance rovers each have one MMRTG (multimission radiothermal generator), and I've never seen a picture of the rover where it is censored, and its actually explicitly called out and shown and drawn attention to in lots of NASA publicity stuff. https://share.google/cqF7eqAJtLH52ALtN https://mars.nasa.gov/internal_resources/788/ | | |
| ▲ | jijijijij 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Looks like I misremembered or confused the censoring stuff. Thanks for the correction. |
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| ▲ | DoctorOetker 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Why would those nuclear "batteries" be censored from Mars rover imagery? To prevent bad actors from acquiring the stuff for a dirty B? | | |
| ▲ | jijijijij 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Yeah, the Mars Liberation Front may use it to attack City 1! It‘s the battery tech, which is classified military stuff. I presume it’s a thing you put in submarine detectors deep in the ocean, or compact spy satellites. But indeed, it’s the type of radioisotope that’s dangerous to just be around, where minuscule amounts could fuck up the whole village. But terrorists would probably rather get their hands on emitters from the medical field than fly to mars. |
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| ▲ | mrbluecoat 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Non-weapon fissile material Thorium is an option. | | |
| ▲ | MertsA 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Thorium isn't fissile, it's fertile. All thorium reactors work by breeding that thorium into uranium. | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Commercial reactor fuel isn't weapons-grade to begin with. | | |
| ▲ | XorNot 3 days ago | parent [-] | | This cannot be stressed enough: commercial reactor fuel is 5% enriched. Bomb material is 90+% enriched. |
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| ▲ | 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
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| ▲ | BobbyTables2 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I don’t relish the idea of a distracted driver sending text messages while driving a nuclear car. I bet the crew on the submarines is much more focused on what they are doing… |
