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Cheap ubiquitous distributed power systems will change the world in many weird ways. Watch small modular nuclear offer home installation for ~$reasonable and ge

Cheap ubiquitous distributed power systems will change the world in many weird ways. Watch small modular nuclear offer home installation for ~$reasonable and getting cheaper every year. Fast forward 20 years from the advent of essentially infinite energy results in WWIII and a new “Great Detente” but only after all the assholes have wreaked all the havoc they can. There are dark days ahead but ultimately a brighter future. Sucks to live through that transition phase though.

walrus01 3mo ago
I'd like to see a well reasoned plan to install small modular nuclear power at peoples houses that prevents the mentally ill, criminally reckless or terrorist minded people from cracking them open and obtaining access to the isotopes.
- pitched 3mo ago
  There isn’t much need to extract isotopes if you have an actual working reactor, is there? Just use that as-is to cause whatever damage.
  - walrus01 3mo ago
    From a strictly red team threat analysis perspective, if you have an extremely safe working reactor that can't be made to melt down, no, the reactor can't be used to hurt much that is in the same location as the reactor. If you are able to get the isotopes out and start spreading them around or making a dirty bomb type thing (where the explosion just serves the purpose of throwing the isotopes around), that could be pretty catastrophic.
- cobbzilla 3mo ago
  have you never visited a rural neighborhood? or an affluent neighborhood? there are still many neighborhoods where people leave their doors unlocked because it is actually that safe. not every location is rife with criminal activity, and many are well protected.
  - walrus01 3mo ago
    Serious question, do you actually think that if you distribute millions of small nuclear reactors to homeowners geographically spread out around all of North America, 0.000% of them will be dangerously mentally ill, criminally reckless or inclined to terrorist like activity? Based on the frequency and number of mass shooter type incidents, (or like, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians) this would be a very naive view. It doesn't require a criminally minded 3rd party coming onto someone's "safe" property to do something horrible with a sawzall and/or oxy-acetylene cutting torch.
    - cobbzilla 3mo ago
      have you never heard of tamper-proof containers? mess with it, it’s useless and you go to jail for a long time? Plus, they’re ubiquitous, you don’t know who has one, max damage is minimal even worst case — go fish!
      - walrus01 3mo ago
        That's a very optimistic view of humanity that I can't say I share. If you give a sufficiently motivated person enough isolation and time, they can cut into just about anything. And possibly deal with cleaning up the results of any internal tamperproof countermeasures. In a world that contains people like the Las Vegas mass shooter or those who conducted the 2015 attacks in Paris, handing out isotopes to the ordinary person seems like a recipe for disaster. We live in a world where multiple people are killed every year by tipping vending machines over onto themselves and you propose to make nuclear reactors a mass market consumer good that goes in everyone's garage?
      - cobbzilla 3mo ago
        We have microwave ovens. They’re pretty safe. Imagine something as safe as that. We can do it. But I can’t disagree that it’s more exciting to imagine terror dreams.
        myrmidon 3mo ago
hdgvhicv 3mo ago
Why would I need “home nuclear” when I’m already self sufficient in power in the winter with 15k of solar and battery, let alone the summer.
leonidasrup 3mo ago
There were some crazy ideas for nuclear powered cars, but there are hard physical limits how small you can make a nuclear reactor. 1. Smaller the nuclear reactor is more neutron leakage you get. Each neutron which escapes a nuclear reactor is a neutron which can not be used to sustain the chain reactor. To compensate this you have to put more fissionable U-235 isotope into the reactor and as a result you need higher enriched nuclear fuel. A nuclear reactor in nuclear submarine can have the size of a dining table but it's running on nuclear fuel enriched to a weapon grade enrichment. 2. Even a small nuclear reactor with few kW thermal output needs a thick and heavy radiation shielding. This is not problem for power plant, or nuclear powered submarine, or nuclear powered ship. But the shielding requirement were problem for nuclear powered airplanes or trains. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft In case of the mobile ML-1 experimental nuclear reactor, built as part of the US Army Nuclear Power Program, extensive shielding was omitted in favor of a personnel exclusion zone of 500 feet (150 m) while in operation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ML-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ML-1 Chicago Pile-1 (CP-1), the first artificial nuclear reactor, didn't have shielding. But, to keep the dose of ionizing radiation for the staff within reasonable limits, it operated only for very short time periods and the total output of CP-1 was only few Watts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pile-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pile-1

walrus01 3mo ago

I'd like to see a well reasoned plan to install small modular nuclear power at peoples houses that prevents the mentally ill, criminally reckless or terrorist minded people from cracking them open and obtaining access to the isotopes.

pitched 3mo ago
There isn’t much need to extract isotopes if you have an actual working reactor, is there? Just use that as-is to cause whatever damage.
- walrus01 3mo ago
  From a strictly red team threat analysis perspective, if you have an extremely safe working reactor that can't be made to melt down, no, the reactor can't be used to hurt much that is in the same location as the reactor. If you are able to get the isotopes out and start spreading them around or making a dirty bomb type thing (where the explosion just serves the purpose of throwing the isotopes around), that could be pretty catastrophic.
cobbzilla 3mo ago
have you never visited a rural neighborhood? or an affluent neighborhood? there are still many neighborhoods where people leave their doors unlocked because it is actually that safe. not every location is rife with criminal activity, and many are well protected.
- walrus01 3mo ago
  Serious question, do you actually think that if you distribute millions of small nuclear reactors to homeowners geographically spread out around all of North America, 0.000% of them will be dangerously mentally ill, criminally reckless or inclined to terrorist like activity? Based on the frequency and number of mass shooter type incidents, (or like, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians) this would be a very naive view. It doesn't require a criminally minded 3rd party coming onto someone's "safe" property to do something horrible with a sawzall and/or oxy-acetylene cutting torch.
  - cobbzilla 3mo ago
    have you never heard of tamper-proof containers? mess with it, it’s useless and you go to jail for a long time? Plus, they’re ubiquitous, you don’t know who has one, max damage is minimal even worst case — go fish!
    - walrus01 3mo ago
      That's a very optimistic view of humanity that I can't say I share. If you give a sufficiently motivated person enough isolation and time, they can cut into just about anything. And possibly deal with cleaning up the results of any internal tamperproof countermeasures. In a world that contains people like the Las Vegas mass shooter or those who conducted the 2015 attacks in Paris, handing out isotopes to the ordinary person seems like a recipe for disaster. We live in a world where multiple people are killed every year by tipping vending machines over onto themselves and you propose to make nuclear reactors a mass market consumer good that goes in everyone's garage?
    - cobbzilla 3mo ago
      We have microwave ovens. They’re pretty safe. Imagine something as safe as that. We can do it. But I can’t disagree that it’s more exciting to imagine terror dreams.
      - myrmidon 3mo ago

hdgvhicv 3mo ago

Why would I need “home nuclear” when I’m already self sufficient in power in the winter with 15k of solar and battery, let alone the summer.

leonidasrup 3mo ago

There were some crazy ideas for nuclear powered cars, but there are hard physical limits how small you can make a nuclear reactor. 1. Smaller the nuclear reactor is more neutron leakage you get. Each neutron which escapes a nuclear reactor is a neutron which can not be used to sustain the chain reactor. To compensate this you have to put more fissionable U-235 isotope into the reactor and as a result you need higher enriched nuclear fuel. A nuclear reactor in nuclear submarine can have the size of a dining table but it's running on nuclear fuel enriched to a weapon grade enrichment. 2. Even a small nuclear reactor with few kW thermal output needs a thick and heavy radiation shielding. This is not problem for power plant, or nuclear powered submarine, or nuclear powered ship. But the shielding requirement were problem for nuclear powered airplanes or trains. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft In case of the mobile ML-1 experimental nuclear reactor, built as part of the US Army Nuclear Power Program, extensive shielding was omitted in favor of a personnel exclusion zone of 500 feet (150 m) while in operation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ML-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ML-1 Chicago Pile-1 (CP-1), the first artificial nuclear reactor, didn't have shielding. But, to keep the dose of ionizing radiation for the staff within reasonable limits, it operated only for very short time periods and the total output of CP-1 was only few Watts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pile-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pile-1