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Mad Max was originally about peak oil collapse. Nuclear holocaust was retconned in circa Thunderdome. The author apparently doesn't know that fissioning the th
by beefman 11y ago
Mad Max was originally about peak oil collapse. Nuclear holocaust was retconned in circa Thunderdome.
The author apparently doesn't know that fissioning the thorium and uranium in an average rock yields 1,000 times the energy needed to melt it.[1] The ground you walk on is literally beaming with energy, and it's incredibly easy to have out.
[1] 2000 GJ and 2 GJ per cubic meter, respectively.
- maxander 11y agoDefine "average rock," and cite a source for this factoid, please? I'd never heard anything of the sort. ...While you're at it, define "incredibly easy." I'd gathered that thorium fission was still a hard problem.
- beefman 11y agoAverage crustal abundance 10ppm * 2.6g/cm^3 * 1m^3 = 26g 26g * 8e16 J/t ≈ 2.6t * 1200ΔC * 0.79J/gΔC * 1000 How did you gather that?
- adrianN 11y agoGood luck extracting all the Thorium and Uranium from an average rock and refining it sufficiently to fuel a nuclear reactor.
- beefman 11y agoWithout understanding anything about it, it's natural to assume it must be difficult. Otherwise, why wouldn't more people be doing it? As noted in the article, coal mostly sat in the ground for thousands of years before 1750, when all of a sudden mining it was the obvious thing to do. Why?
- seanp2k2 11y agoAnother interesting movie dealing with post-apocalyptic resource-constrained humans is Waterworld (1995).