Skunk Works

Lockheed Martin is talking about a fusion reactor small enough to put on the back of a truck in ten years.

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Can it be that much longer until we have warp engines the size of walnuts. LOL.

Reply to
Bob La Londe
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Fusion looks like the future if they can develop it

Reply to
NickMark

I thought I remembered that they put small reactors on some of these space probes. (????)

Reply to
Jim

I believe some satellites were powered with a nuclear battery. The distinction I do not know, but supposedly it is not a reactor.

From Wikipedia. This does not sound like a reactor to me:

A radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG, RITEG) is an electrical generator that uses an array of thermocouples to convert the heat released by the decay of a suitable radioactive material into electricity by the Seebeck effect.

RTGs have been used as power sources in satellites, space probes and unmanned remote facilities such as a series of lighthouses built by the former Soviet Union inside the Arctic Circle. RTGs are usually the most desirable power source for robotic or unmaintained situations that need a few hundred watts (or less) of power for durations too long for fuel cells, batteries, or generators to provide economically and in places where solar cells are not practical. Safe use of RTGs requires containment of the radioisotopes long after the productive life of the unit.

Reply to
Bob La Londe

Isn't that the whole problem with fusion?

People keep saying we should use more nuclear power plants for cheaper powe r but they seem to forget that the waste material is going to last for the next half million years or so. What to do with it has been the problem righ t from the beginning and something no one figures into the cost of running one of these plants.

I remember reading that there is another kind of fusion that requires much more up front cost but is much cleaner. But ..... you know how far that's g oing to go when it's much easier to bury the waste and let it contaminate t he earth some more. I sure hope we can colonize Mars and more before this p lanet starts to get even with us for what we've done to it.

Reply to
Jim

I don't know about fusion, but that is certainly the problem with fission plants.

Reply to
Bob La Londe

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