Comment on It works better if you put it in your mouth first.
grue@lemmy.world 2 weeks agoWhat grid? It looks like the “power box” on the wall is generating power for that house all by itself, no transmission necessary.
Considering that the smallest operating nuclear reactor ever made was this big…
…and that critical mass is a thing, I can only assume the “power box” was some kind of RTG.
Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Wouldn’t all but the largest RTGs struggle to power more than a few incandescent light bulbs, though? Their output is usually from a few dozen to a few hundred watts, looking at the table on wikipedia.
vane@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It was 60 years ago. If they put same effort to it as they put to computers you would have one in your pocket.
jj4211@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
RTGs aren’t as limited by technological investment as they are constrained by fundamental physics.
LH0ezVT@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
It is pretty hard to irradiate a whole block and give everyone turbo-cancer with my smartphone, tbh.
The Soviets used RTGs quite a bit for remote installations, and “whoops, we lost one, I hope nobody finds it and kills their family” is a real concern (that was kind of ignored because a. Russia is big and b. it’s the Soviets we are talking about)
vane@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Nobody wants you to wear it. It would be enough if you could keep it next to the building that would power it for next 100 or 1000 years. Wouldn’t it be nice to not have to worry about energy in your house for couple of generations ? You can read about ex. carbon-14 battery www.ukaea.org/…/carbon-14-diamond-battery/ or watch video here www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgGVt4sUnnw