5 ms·

I mean it kind of seems ridiculous to think we could have radioactive material fissioning at our house or in our car. My neighbor barely takes out their tras

I mean it kind of seems ridiculous to think we could have radioactive material fissioning at our house or in our car. My neighbor barely takes out their trash. If that is thanks to the Green Movement, then let me thank the Green Movement.

TeMPOraL 5y ago
Your neighbor may have problems handling their trash, but they for sure have countless dangerous chemicals around their house, and yet they live safely. I'm not even talking about the obvious (household cleaning agents) - their fridge and AC unit likely have pretty nasty substances circulating inside. The trick is, as always, to make a sealed system and scare people into not messing with it.
- pope_meat 5y ago
  Until it's time to dispose of the old fridge, and then your idiot neighbor just opens it up and releases it in to the air, because proper disposal requires a fee he doesn't want to pay, and then breaks down the fridge to tiny pieces to throw in the regular trash. This has happened, a lot.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    And why is the fridge getting disposed of? Odds are it's because the refrigerant had already become one with the atmosphere and the fridge no longer refrigerates. This is also the case for window A/C units as well. Most of the needless venting comes from automotive systems and that's going to be a non-issue in a few years as OEMs continue to switch over to newer refrigerants that are less polluting.
    - pope_meat 5y ago
      Because the lady of the house really wanted stainless steel appliances in the updated kitchen.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  The gases used as refrigerants are actually not that dangerous at all, which is why they're used in such situations. If the thin pipes of your fridge or AC leak all their refrigerant in your home you'll be fine. Maybe have some difficulty breathing, it's not healthy but nothing serious. Having a nuclear reactor in every house would be insane. Even if they don't leak radiation during their lifespan in normal operation. You can scare most people out of opening them. But can you scare every single person out of doing so? Considering some will be mentally unstable too, or outright psychopathic. The most dangerous thing a mad person can do right now is blow up their house with natural gas. Which is pretty bad, it can damage houses in the nearby area. It absolutely pales in comparison to creating a mini meltdown or even nuclear pollution however. One alpha-emitting dust particle inhaled into the lungs is enough to kill over time. And this is not a fantasy. It's happened in real life. Consider the Goiania incident for example and it's not the only one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident
  - mLuby 5y ago
    > But can you scare every single person out of [tampering with a home atomic reactor]? I'd bet there's a reactor design that's tamper-proof enough to be less lethal than vending machines. That just leaves very determined, educated terrorists trying to harvest the fuel for radiotoxins or a dirty bomb. There are probably less convoluted ways to cause mass death and destruction than that, but "radioactive" and "fallout" are certainly more terrifying than "gunman" "bomb" or "poison" even if the actual damage is likely much lower. > The most dangerous thing a mad person can do right now is blow up their house with natural gas. Wiki says the Oklahoma City bomb cost USD5000 and was equivalent to 5000 lbs of TNT. I don't have a TNT figure for gas explosions in buildings (even the worst-case intentional one you describe), but it sounds like they're way less powerful than that. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271492483_Hazard_analysis_and_consequences_assessment_of_gas_pipeline_rupture_and https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271492483_Hazard_an... Don't forget to weigh all this doom and gloom against the massive (green) upsides of distributed power generation!
    - GekkePrutser 5y ago
- mrfusion 5y ago
  There a pretty substantial amount of mercury in CFL bulbs.
- kragen 5y ago
  This was true 90 years ago, which is why Einstein and Szilard invented their refrigerator; it was relatively commonplace at the time for a refrigerator to rupture and fill the house with sulfur dioxide, killing the inhabitants. Ammonia absorption refrigerators were even worse, and the earliest refrigeration equipment from the 01860s used "chimogene", which we now know as propane and butane, which is not toxic but disastrously inflammable. Midgley's invention of chlorofluorocarbons turned out to be the key, and ever since then, fridges and air conditioners have been mostly built without any pretty nasty substances. Well, except for the ozone. That's getting better, though.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    >the earliest refrigeration equipment from the 01860s used "chimogene", which we now know as propane and butane, which is not toxic but disastrously inflammable Hydrocarbon refrigerants went out of vogue for performance reasons but were/are still used the world over in certain applications and there's been a recent uptick now that we care more about not destroying the environment. The fuel:air mix you need for fire is narrow enough that ignition is mostly not a problem in practice, it also helps that society have moved away from open flames for a lot of heating and lighting applications. Google "R600a"
    - pfdietz 5y ago
      The refrigerant was not the only place CFCs and HFCs were used in refrigerators -- they were used as blowing agents in the foam insulation. Today, cyclopentane is used as the blowing agent.
- 542354234235 5y ago
  >The trick is, as always, to make a sealed system and scare people into not messing with it. No, it is about knowing where the cutoff point of risk vs reward is. It is about understanding when diminishing returns makes something impractical. Trying to design a nuclear reactor small enough for a house or car, that is also so safe, tamper proof, and unweaponizable that it is ok to just have 10s of millions of them floating around is pointlessly difficult. Building a reactor to go into personal vehicles that crash all the time is ridiculous. It’s the different version of the flying car, when we realized that maybe having everyone moving themselves around in personal vehicles that would plummet out of the sky in the event of mechanical failure instead of just pulling over in the breakdown lane. It is a “that would be cool” idea. Replacing coal plants with nuclear plants is a far better idea. Building self-contained smaller reactors to provide power on the neighborhood, sub division, or factory complex level is a far better idea. Why would I even want a reactor taking of space in my house when I could just get the same electricity from a more efficient reactor installed in a large concrete shed for my whole block? Why would I want to buy an insanely over engineered nuclear car, when I could just charge up my Battery Electric using my neighborhood reactor off peak electricity? Or I could fill up my hydrogen electric car produced by my neighborhood reactor through electrolysis during times of excess power generation.
tomp 5y ago
How often do you need to "take out the trash" from a nuclear reactor? Once every 10 years?

TeMPOraL 5y ago

Your neighbor may have problems handling their trash, but they for sure have countless dangerous chemicals around their house, and yet they live safely. I'm not even talking about the obvious (household cleaning agents) - their fridge and AC unit likely have pretty nasty substances circulating inside. The trick is, as always, to make a sealed system and scare people into not messing with it.

pope_meat 5y ago
Until it's time to dispose of the old fridge, and then your idiot neighbor just opens it up and releases it in to the air, because proper disposal requires a fee he doesn't want to pay, and then breaks down the fridge to tiny pieces to throw in the regular trash. This has happened, a lot.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  And why is the fridge getting disposed of? Odds are it's because the refrigerant had already become one with the atmosphere and the fridge no longer refrigerates. This is also the case for window A/C units as well. Most of the needless venting comes from automotive systems and that's going to be a non-issue in a few years as OEMs continue to switch over to newer refrigerants that are less polluting.
  - pope_meat 5y ago
    Because the lady of the house really wanted stainless steel appliances in the updated kitchen.
GekkePrutser 5y ago
The gases used as refrigerants are actually not that dangerous at all, which is why they're used in such situations. If the thin pipes of your fridge or AC leak all their refrigerant in your home you'll be fine. Maybe have some difficulty breathing, it's not healthy but nothing serious. Having a nuclear reactor in every house would be insane. Even if they don't leak radiation during their lifespan in normal operation. You can scare most people out of opening them. But can you scare every single person out of doing so? Considering some will be mentally unstable too, or outright psychopathic. The most dangerous thing a mad person can do right now is blow up their house with natural gas. Which is pretty bad, it can damage houses in the nearby area. It absolutely pales in comparison to creating a mini meltdown or even nuclear pollution however. One alpha-emitting dust particle inhaled into the lungs is enough to kill over time. And this is not a fantasy. It's happened in real life. Consider the Goiania incident for example and it's not the only one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident
- mLuby 5y ago
  > But can you scare every single person out of [tampering with a home atomic reactor]? I'd bet there's a reactor design that's tamper-proof enough to be less lethal than vending machines. That just leaves very determined, educated terrorists trying to harvest the fuel for radiotoxins or a dirty bomb. There are probably less convoluted ways to cause mass death and destruction than that, but "radioactive" and "fallout" are certainly more terrifying than "gunman" "bomb" or "poison" even if the actual damage is likely much lower. > The most dangerous thing a mad person can do right now is blow up their house with natural gas. Wiki says the Oklahoma City bomb cost USD5000 and was equivalent to 5000 lbs of TNT. I don't have a TNT figure for gas explosions in buildings (even the worst-case intentional one you describe), but it sounds like they're way less powerful than that. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271492483_Hazard_analysis_and_consequences_assessment_of_gas_pipeline_rupture_and https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271492483_Hazard_an... Don't forget to weigh all this doom and gloom against the massive (green) upsides of distributed power generation!
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
mrfusion 5y ago
There a pretty substantial amount of mercury in CFL bulbs.
kragen 5y ago
This was true 90 years ago, which is why Einstein and Szilard invented their refrigerator; it was relatively commonplace at the time for a refrigerator to rupture and fill the house with sulfur dioxide, killing the inhabitants. Ammonia absorption refrigerators were even worse, and the earliest refrigeration equipment from the 01860s used "chimogene", which we now know as propane and butane, which is not toxic but disastrously inflammable. Midgley's invention of chlorofluorocarbons turned out to be the key, and ever since then, fridges and air conditioners have been mostly built without any pretty nasty substances. Well, except for the ozone. That's getting better, though.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  >the earliest refrigeration equipment from the 01860s used "chimogene", which we now know as propane and butane, which is not toxic but disastrously inflammable Hydrocarbon refrigerants went out of vogue for performance reasons but were/are still used the world over in certain applications and there's been a recent uptick now that we care more about not destroying the environment. The fuel:air mix you need for fire is narrow enough that ignition is mostly not a problem in practice, it also helps that society have moved away from open flames for a lot of heating and lighting applications. Google "R600a"
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    The refrigerant was not the only place CFCs and HFCs were used in refrigerators -- they were used as blowing agents in the foam insulation. Today, cyclopentane is used as the blowing agent.
542354234235 5y ago
>The trick is, as always, to make a sealed system and scare people into not messing with it. No, it is about knowing where the cutoff point of risk vs reward is. It is about understanding when diminishing returns makes something impractical. Trying to design a nuclear reactor small enough for a house or car, that is also so safe, tamper proof, and unweaponizable that it is ok to just have 10s of millions of them floating around is pointlessly difficult. Building a reactor to go into personal vehicles that crash all the time is ridiculous. It’s the different version of the flying car, when we realized that maybe having everyone moving themselves around in personal vehicles that would plummet out of the sky in the event of mechanical failure instead of just pulling over in the breakdown lane. It is a “that would be cool” idea. Replacing coal plants with nuclear plants is a far better idea. Building self-contained smaller reactors to provide power on the neighborhood, sub division, or factory complex level is a far better idea. Why would I even want a reactor taking of space in my house when I could just get the same electricity from a more efficient reactor installed in a large concrete shed for my whole block? Why would I want to buy an insanely over engineered nuclear car, when I could just charge up my Battery Electric using my neighborhood reactor off peak electricity? Or I could fill up my hydrogen electric car produced by my neighborhood reactor through electrolysis during times of excess power generation.

tomp 5y ago

How often do you need to "take out the trash" from a nuclear reactor? Once every 10 years?