4 ms·
You should be able to make a reactor with anything larger than a couple kg of material. Maybe you can avoid a thorium reactor if that size from being a valuabl
by marcosdumay 2y ago
You should be able to make a reactor with anything larger than a couple kg of material.
Maybe you can avoid a thorium reactor if that size from being a valuable target. I have little idea about the social risks of somebody using the material as poison, instead of explosive, but I suspect it's incredibly overblown currently. (Wannabe thieves are probably way more effective going after something else.)
But well, don't expect very small reactors to be efficient or cheap. They maybe could be cheap heat sources, but electricity generation and distribution are full of scale efficiencies.
- pfdietz 2y ago> You should be able to make a reactor with anything larger than a couple kg of material. A reactor that small needs highly enriched fissionable material. Of course it would need guards, since it's a proliferation nightmare.
- throwup238 2y agoThe lower limit is a nuclear lightbulb with ~20kg of uranium fuel, but that’s a high pressure reactor chamber that would definitely need to be protected and it needs large centrifuges inline to separate the fuel back out from the gas.
- TheDudeMan 2y agoYou don't need distribution for a small enough reactor -- you use the electricity on site.