How well does nuclear power miniaturize...

How well does nuclear power miniaturize? Most nuclear reactors now (or maybe all of them) boil water to spin a turbine so it would definitely help if we could find a way to more directly harness that energy, and fusion would help even more. I figure a car could at some point be powered by nuclear energy since subs already are (though there are some problems with this) but is it realistic to think we could at some point use it to directly power things like cell phones?

Other urls found in this thread:

ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20140017750.pdf
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

You want a nuclear reaction going on beside your ear?
The nuke plant charging a grid that you plug your phone into to charge its battery works fine for now.

I used to have the exact pic you picked for your post printed out as a poster on my wall, only the font wasn't comic sans.

The only real issue with implementing it in small normal devices is what could go wrong. Imagine someone dropping their phone into the toilet and down the stairs and the next thing you know the city block becomes Chernobyl 2.0. I dunno though, I have. A bias against nuclear energy since it keeps destroying my shit in Simcity. (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

As long as we can find a way to properly shield it I can't see why not. At least radiation wise. The noise could be a problem though. I figure small devices are a long ways away if ever but powering a car with nuclear energy should be possible to some extent. I was reading about nuclear submarines recently and their reactors last the entire life of the sub itself, never needing to be refueled, which would be a godsend for cars too.

There's always going to be issues with what could possibly happen with energy sources. I mean right now there are phones that literally melt because of the battery. The small amount of nuclear material needed to power a phone shouldn't emit as much radiation as the amount used in a power plant I would imagine. If we could cure cancer that would eliminate one issue with spreading radiation.

>every terrorist has a nuke in their pocket
no thanks

>>How well does nuclear power miniaturize
not very well.

The mass of fissiles has to be above the critical mass or pretty close to it or you don't get a self-sustaining reaction.

because of this, one needs highly enriched fuel to make the reactor as compact as possible. So not exactly something you can trust the average person with.

But small nuclear reactors are being considered as power sources for spacecraft, because NASA is running low on plutonium.
The planned KRUSTY reactor rated for about 1 KW fits in a 1m - 3m form factor. This does not include any shielding, as said reactor would be mounted on a pole away from the rest of the spacecraft

ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20140017750.pdf

For anything else that's not in space, you need lots of shielding

So it seems from what you're saying that something like a car and above is possible but anything smaller than that wouldn't really work unless you have basically weapons grade material. That's fine I guess. We really do need some revolution in power I think. I don't know how much fossil fuels we have left on Earth and we still have no idea what we're going to replace it with when it's gone, out of the choices we have. Battery tech seems to suck too. You have phones that die after a day of use and such. I don't think electric cars at the moment last that long either.

Couple hundred of nuclear reactors crashing each other, trees or city lights every day is not the best idea

No, not quite. IF you have weapons-grade material, THEN you can power a semi truck with a fission reactor. Anything smaller than that basically isn't happening.

Why not just use a thermoelectric generator? You could buy one or DIY it pretty easily. Peltier plate ones are pretty easy to make. My personal mini-generator I use as a phone charger uses a nitinol engine. Using the turbine I also have a little fan attached. Pretty neato, and no real worry of radiation poisoning.

Highly inefficient, especially if you use Peltier plates. And how are you going to heat and cool it?

Most peltier plate ones are rather shitty I admit and need major beefing up for any real use. Thats why I use a nitinol engine. Using a decent gearbox to increase rotation similar to a wind turbine model gets a decent enough output. Mine took a bit of trial and error to design, but candle heat heats the water at one end while the fan attachment cools it at the other. Made it for power outages.

Nuclear reactors of the type in your drawing will never shrink to the size of a car, they have to have a turbine, a primary/secondary system, and enough to fuel to be fissile. For that you need something like a radioisotope thermoelectric generator. Something that turns heat directly into electricity. Useful but it requires Pu-238 which is difficult to get, politically. We could get it out of plenty of spent fuel but there are not many useful things plutonium are used for and nuclear bomb fears just far outweigh the benefits.

We could make smaller nuclear reactors around the country though, ones that aren't as big and crazy looking as seen on the Simpsons. The reason they're so big is because they produce a lot of power and they use water as a coolant. Water expands a lot when heated to desirable temperatures (1000℉+) and the buildings have to contain all that steam. So one way to make those plants much smaller is change the coolant. You can use a liquid salt reactor, or a liquid metal sodium reactor. Because the boiling temps are so high you don't need to worry about catching steam and the outside building can be much much smaller.

>You can use a liquid salt reactor, or a liquid metal sodium reactor.

how does a power plant generate energy if it doesnt use steam turbines at all?
genuinely curious

There was an interesting thing about diamonds being made from the irradiated graphene in nuclear reactors that could be used as thousand year batteries

Any sources for reading to learn to do something like that?

Yeah you could power stuff with nuclear but now you're trusting people to maintain a nuclear reactor? You do realize that a ton of people (mainly rich assholes) drive cars until they die (don't even change the oil) then buy a new one (this happens world wide).
Also you can't exactly turn reactors on an off like a regular engine. Modern cars turn their engines off at red lights and stuff in a meme attempt to save gas.

A car would probably work, but probably kill you, or be too heavy

haha, no one even talked about the tritium based beta ray miniature reactors.

Look it up, they can be the size of a couple pennies stacked side by side.

That's just talking about a way to use a particular isotope as a betavoltaic power source. They're even wimpier than RTGs.

Nice for space travel though.