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 small* 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.* 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.

*** "The demo system won't operate in an orbit where it has
**** 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.** The whole
Manhattan project took about 5 years.** Think what could have been done
in those 70 years with those trillions of dollars.* What a missed
opportunity.

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

Nuclear fusion is only five years away. Nothing has changed in fifty
years. It's always been five years away.

BTW, what happened to cold nuclear fusion?