On 5/13/2021 4:07 PM, dpb wrote:
On 5/13/2021 3:37 PM, J. Clarke wrote:
On Thu, 13 May 2021 15:42:47 -0400, knuttle
wrote:

On 5/13/2021 3:32 PM, J. Clarke wrote:
On Thu, 13 May 2021 13:16:07 -0500, dpb wrote:

On 5/13/2021 11:50 AM, knuttle wrote:
On 5/13/2021 12:13 PM, Scott Lurndal wrote:
knuttle writes:

As you sit in the gas line or are looking for a station with
gas, DON"T
you wish your car was powered by on of the smallÂ* nuclear
reactor like
those they have use to power satellites for decades?

Hm.. There's only one US nuclear reactor currently in orbit.
SNAP-10A.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNAP-10A

The russians had a reactor that deorbited unexpectedly and
contaminated
parts of northern Canada in 1977.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US-A

The last two Mars rovers have had Pu-powered RTG's - radioisotope
thermal
generators, which don't use fission, but rather are powered by the
heat generated as the Pu decays into daughter products.Â* On the
downside,
the power is limited to sub 1kw, which won't run a car for very
long.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioi...tric_generator

Satellites use solar panels.

DARPA is working with Lockmart on the Draco project to test a
new reactor design in space for military satellites - it will use
HALEU (High-Assay, Low-Enriched Uranium) rather than the HEU
(Highly-enriched Uranium) in the Draco test reactor.

Â* Â*Â*Â* "The demo system won't operate in an orbit where it has
Â* Â*Â*Â*Â* any - even a remote - chance of coming back to Earth."

Might as well wish for a car powered by a Mr. Fusion device.

This research could have been done decades ago using the Trillions of
dollars that have been spent to kill nuclear energy.Â*Â* The whole
Manhattan project took about 5 years.Â*Â* Think what could have been
done
in those 70 years with those trillions of dollars.Â* What a missed
opportunity.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/after-decades-decline-us-national-fusion-lab-seeks-rebirth


"Trillions of dollars" aren't going to make fusion happen.Â* Every time
they think they've got all the problems solved, they find a new one.
Fusion is going to happen when one day they think they've got all the
problems solved and their new test reactor _doesn't_ find a new one.

I was not thinking of spending trillions for fusion.Â* I was thinking of
cleaning up and reusing the spent nuclear fuel;Â* This seems like a
chemistry and physics problem. Improving the reactors and the control
systems them self.Â* The development of small portable high efficiency
nuclear reactors.

Cleaning up the fuel is a political problem.Â* Many solutions are know,
all of them meet massive political resistance.

Indeed.Â* The peanut farmer from GA couldn't tell the difference between
commercial nuclear fuel and weapons reprocessing.Â* He's the one that put
the edict in the the NRC was not to license reprocessing facilities in
the US and killed the Clinch River Breeder Reactor Project.

GE had already invested $10s of M $$ and was planning to build a nearly
$1B reprocessing plant for commercial US fuel at Savannah River at the
time...

--


Wasn't peanut guy the one that was on watch when Iran made American
citizens hostage until Reagan was elected? Was'nt he the one that
fumbled the switch to metric? HE WAS THE ONE that said that America's
good days are behind her and the we should not expect for life to be as
good as it had been.

Talk about a looser throwing in the towel!!

He was really no more than an interim president, kind'a like the one we
have now.