2012-11-22
post/36261919690
Memphet’ran on spacebattles.com, as featured by Sarah Pavis, guest editing kottke.org.
I’d heard of Orion, but not nuclear salt water rockets, which get impressive performance:
One design would generate 13 meganewtons of thrust at 66 km/s exhaust velocity (compared to ~4.5 km/s exhaust velocity for the best chemical rockets of today). Another design would achieve much higher exhaust velocities (4,700 km/s) and use 2,700 tonnes of highly enriched Uranium salts in water to propel a 300 tonne spacecraft up to 3.6% of the speed of light.
Of course, there are slight drawbacks to using these things in a biosphere:
a NSWR would eject massive quantities of superheated steam, still containing fissioning nuclear salts. Terrestrial testing might be subject to reasonable objections; as one physicist wrote, “Writing the environmental impact statement for such tests […] might present an interesting problem …”
2012-04-25
post/21798429798
National Geographic: Is Armenia’s Nuclear Plant the World’s Most Dangerous? (via):
The Metsamor power station is one of a mere handful of remaining nuclear reactors of its kind that were built without primary containment structures. All five of these first-generation water-moderated Soviet units are past or near their original retirement ages, but one salient fact sets Armenia’s reactor apart from the four in Russia.
Metsamor lies on some of Earth’s most earthquake-prone terrain.
(I note the article carries lots of advertising for an oil company. Hmm.)
(Source: google.com)
post/21755628163
Three Mile Island, circa 1980, from Postcards of Mushroom Clouds at Slate.
2012-04-05
post/20501665874
2012-03-28
post/20061715861
Cooling tower of the experimental THTR-300 thorium reactor, Germany (via)
2012-03-15
post/19352019208
2012-01-28
post/16616103860
![berkeley nuclear power station by smallritual on Flickr.Apparently, “only the sealed reactor core [is] left now”.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyhowcEjxU1qz4vjro1_500.jpg)
berkeley nuclear power station by smallritual on Flickr.
Apparently, “only the sealed reactor core [is] left now”.
2011-12-29
post/14984108884
Luca Zanie (via Energy meets art with photographer Luca Zanier (Wired UK))
“Here we are at the heart of the nuclear-power plant,” says Zanier. “I visited many of the control rooms – most were dull, but this one is special and strange. A lot of my friends asked me whether I had manipulated this photograph.”
That’s nice, that.
