The Nuclear Lightbulb (2020)
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The Nuclear Lightbulb (2020)
1–10 of 52 posts
Re: The Nuclear Lightbulb (2020)
#2In case you can't see the original link: https://web.archive.org/web/20210130190443/https://beyondner...
Re: The Nuclear Lightbulb (2020)
#3Things like this make me wonder how cheap a truly commoditized nuclear industry could be. What kind of lifestyle are we giving up by requiring orders of magnitude fewer deaths-per-megawatt-hour of nuclear compared to fossil fuels? What if we were civilized enough you didn't have to worry about anyone building their own atom bomb?
Re: The Nuclear Lightbulb (2020)
#4"For those of us of a certain age, there was a toy that was quite popular: the Easy-Bake Oven...Rather than having a more normal resistive heating element as you find in a normal oven, though, a special light bulb was mounted in the oven, and the waste heat from the bulb would heat the oven enough to cook the food."
I can't find any evidence that the Easy Bake oven used a "special" light bulb. It just used 2 normal 100 watt incandescent bulbs as far as I can tell. Tungsten is a normal resistive heating element, pretty common in electric furnaces.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Premier_...
Though there was a 2006 redesign that apparently didn't go well: https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2007/new-easy-bake-oven-recall-...
Re: The Nuclear Lightbulb (2020)
#5Things like this make me wonder how cheap a truly commoditized nuclear industry could be. What kind of lifestyle are we giving up by requiring orders of magnitude fewer deaths-per-megawatt-hour of nuclear compared to fossil fuels? What if we were civilized enough you didn't have to worry about anyone building their own atom bomb?
I think it be a lot like airliners vs small aircraft in terms of safety.
Re: The Nuclear Lightbulb (2020)
#6Things like this make me wonder how cheap a truly commoditized nuclear industry could be. What kind of lifestyle are we giving up by requiring orders of magnitude fewer deaths-per-megawatt-hour of nuclear compared to fossil fuels? What if we were civilized enough you didn't have to worry about anyone building their own atom bomb?
There is a lot of very complex, and very real human psychology and sociology at play in those decisions. A lot of it centers around who accrues the benefits of a given energy source, vs. who pays the consequences.
Re: The Nuclear Lightbulb (2020)
#7Things like this make me wonder how cheap a truly commoditized nuclear industry could be. What kind of lifestyle are we giving up by requiring orders of magnitude fewer deaths-per-megawatt-hour of nuclear compared to fossil fuels? What if we were civilized enough you didn't have to worry about anyone building their own atom bomb?
Not that much. Nuclear energy alone wouldn't really make a huge difference. Even if we ignore the obvious problems with safety (big issue with older designs and their spent fuel storage) and security (huge issue with modern designs) when nuclear power would be similarly widespread as, e.g., natural gas: There is still the fact that it is inherently a stationary power source (with not that many good places to put it). Distribution of electricity isn't a big problem, but it doesn't help for mobility applications, so we would need the battery or H2 industry anyways.
Factor in the wastly different levels of difficulty between solar and nuclear power, I'd think we would also have the latter, if just as a simple alternative when you don't have the time or the capital to setup a nuclear power plant. Wind energy might be a different matter, as it comes with a lot more practical difficulties.
One could simply compare France and Germany to understand how things would end up, I think.
Re: The Nuclear Lightbulb (2020)
#8Things like this make me wonder how cheap a truly commoditized nuclear industry could be. What kind of lifestyle are we giving up by requiring orders of magnitude fewer deaths-per-megawatt-hour of nuclear compared to fossil fuels? What if we were civilized enough you didn't have to worry about anyone building their own atom bomb?
>What if we were civilized enough you didn't have to worry about anyone building their own atom bomb?
Then we'd be something other than human. You'd need a species that values all members equally and has no preference for those in the same social group (or family, etc.). Likely it also means members cannot value themselves above other members. Without all that "civilized" simply means that some group gets oppressed and isn't allowed to fight back in any way.
Re: The Nuclear Lightbulb (2020)
#9Keeping all core gasses confined is one option. A spec of dust on the quart, crytaline defect, hydrogen embrittlement, or anything else and you get R.U.D.
Another is not to fight it, and let them go. The closest thing to a torch drive possible with modern day engineering after the NSWR is the open cycle gas core rocket.
Thrust in meganewtons, and 1000+ ISP
Re: The Nuclear Lightbulb (2020)
#10Keeping all core gasses confined is one option. A spec of dust on the quart, crytaline defect, hydrogen embrittlement, or anything else and you get R.U.D. Another is not to fight it, and let them go. The closest thing to a torch drive possible with modern day engineering after the NSWR is the open cycle gas core rocket. Thrust in meganewtons, and 1000+ ISP
Nobody would accept the fallout if it's a ground launch. And if it's a space launch, why not go directly to Project Orion?