Comment on At this rate, why not.

• marcos@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  You either spend a truckload of resources during decades to make a bomb that explodes releasing the same energy humanity spends in two months, or you spend a truckload of resources doing the end task at a slower pace for decades.

  The later is guaranteed to require a smaller truckload.

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  • anton@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Why is the second guaranteed to be smaller?
    We know how nuclear bombs work. The majority of the energy comes from nuclear fission, a highly exothermic process, that can (in the foreseeable future) only be used in bombs.
    If we don’t need to drop the bomb, but rather assemble it in place, it can just use deuterium as a fusion fuel. Deuterium can be distilled from normal water for much less energy that it generates in fusion.

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    • marcos@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      The majority of the energy comes from nuclear fission

      Yes, from an extremely inefficient fission reaction that can be improved by an order of magnitude by doing it slowly in a reactor.

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      • anton@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        Mixed up fission and fusion there, they sound so similar in English.
        The comment talks about fusion.

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