The first man made reactor (there’s an extinct naturally occurring one) was created as part of the Manhattan project to create the first bombs. So we really did speed run the tech tree for bomb on that one. The first nuclear power plant was in 1951.
Comment on It works better if you put it in your mouth first.
Emi@ani.social 14 hours agoI don’t know history of uranium very much but wasn’t it first used to paint ceramics and later radium for glowing watches? Uranium bombs were made later probably after it was used to generate power. But I wonder what our world would look like if there was not as much scare of nuclear power. Perhaps bit like fallouts world? We still have some time left to 23rd October 2077 thankfully.
_stranger_@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
if there was not as much scare of nuclear power.
I was pro nuclear until solar became cheaper than nuclear but I think if there was less scare about nuclear, there would have been more Chernobyls. That happened because of thinking it’s completely safe.
MrQuallzin@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
Chernobyl happened through the incompetence of leadership, not because they thought it was “completely safe”.
MajinBlayze@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
It’s a good thing leadership incompetence is something that only ever happens once
SharkAttak@kbin.melroy.org 12 hours ago
Incompetence AND overconfidence, cause those reactors were the latest generation and considered completely safe.
MrQuallzin@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
I’d sure hope that the latest generation of a technology would be considered safe. That’s generally how things work. And then when accidents occur, we learn and make things safer the next time.
As to them considering it completely safe, I’d love to read about that if you have sources. Cause I doubt that they thought it couldn’t fail.
grue@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
I was pro-nuclear until Georgia Power stuck me with the bill for Plant Vogtle 3 and 4.
(Or rather, I was pro-nuclear until shortly after construction began on a 7-year plan that ultimately took 15 years, when it started to become clear that gross incompetence and corruption was going to make it an expensive debacle.)
Nuclear power from Vogtle 3 and 4 costs 16¢ per kWh (according to the linked document), by the way, compared to less than 0.1¢ per kWh expected by OP’s comic.
Railing5132@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
The watches were radium, not uranium.
BillyClark@piefed.social 13 hours ago
First use: glowing paint
Second use: cancer
MajinBlayze@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
That’s just the first use again