Imagine using something dangerous to generate power or heat for a home. Something that if it leaks into your home could suffocate you overnight or explode, or that in normal use can give children respiratory issues or cause cancer. Thank goodness we’re too smart to use something like that unlike the absolute imbeciles in this comic
It works better if you put it in your mouth first.
Submitted 11 hours ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/df43ffd8-1982-44ed-b76f-038340034145.jpeg
Comments
aberrate_junior_beatnik@midwest.social 10 hours ago
lengau@midwest.social 9 hours ago
Imagine if we had to move it around in such large quantities that there were thousands of kilometres of unwatched pipelines just out there, potentially leaking.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
And imagine people fight pointless wars over resources instead of using the renewables that are available for free.
CentipedeFarrier@piefed.social 2 hours ago
I have absolutely no idea how to find reference to this at this point because every search I do results in absolute bullshit that’s not related (like apparently the most liquid currency is the diarrhea coin… a problem that didn’t exist a few years ago..), but I recall trading about a practice from like the medieval era or something where special coins were made that contained heavy metals, and when consumed, would induce diarrhea. They would be retrieved, washed, and reused, and even passed down in families.
Today we know how bad of an idea something like that is, but then, like with radiation, it was all ghosts in the blood causing problems. Shitting blood was normalized.
Aqarius@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Not a coin m, and not medieval. The search term is “antimony pill”.
Deceptichum@quokk.au 4 hours ago
“Junior please walk 30cm to the left and do this task that would have been easier for me to do than ask you to do it”
modus@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
It’s just one of those things you can do yourself, but you want the kid to feel valuable too.
Besides, if you’re getting radiation poisoning, you want that little shit to go down with you.
AlternatePersonMan@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Pretty sure that kid’s arm would hang down to his ankle if he straightened it. Must be all those atomic wafers.
RedFrank24@piefed.social 9 hours ago
That’s not his arm.
TacoButtPlug@sh.itjust.works 8 hours ago
I feel like “Atomic Wafer” should be a band name
Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Or as new slang for a tab of LSD
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
why do i feel like Radioactive Buttplug is both already a band and an approved medical device
Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de 10 hours ago
“Kilowat”
Might have questioned the reliability of that source even back then already…
dmention7@midwest.social 10 hours ago
Yes, the kilo-wat. For when a simple “wat” doesn’t accurately capture the absurdity of the situation.
For example, asking junior to put an atomic wafer in the power box, when you are standing right fucking next to it.
SharkAttak@kbin.melroy.org 8 hours ago
She can't do it, her eyes fell off because of the radiations.
danc4498@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Could you imagine a world where we first used atomic power for good and not evil?
Emi@ani.social 10 hours ago
I 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.
BillyClark@piefed.social 10 hours ago
First use: glowing paint
Second use: cancer_stranger_@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
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.
Railing5132@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
The watches were radium, not uranium.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 10 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.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Not really. It’s not economical and never has been. Civilian use of nuclear energy has only ever been a cover for nuclear arms development.
thisbenzingring@lemmy.today 8 hours ago
people down voting you haven’t considered the cost of dealing with the waste. Consider how long and expensive Hanford Washington is and how much damage it’s done to the environment around it. Then there’s Fukushima Japan. The damage will be dealt with for a 1000 years. And the reactors that don’t break still have so many spent rods and other waste that can’t just be thrown away. The best idea was to store it in the bottom of old mines but nobody wants it shipped over their backyard to get it there. It’s a dead end.
drolex@sopuli.xyz 10 hours ago
That world, that wonderful utopic world… we could weaponize it!
Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
So was the popular conception back then that power was somehow magically transferred directly from uranium to the power grid?
grue@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
What 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 4 hours 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.
Forester@pawb.social 10 hours ago
Miniature breeder reactor
Grail@multiverse.soulism.net 9 hours ago
The weapons grade stuff is U-235, right? Do conventional nuclear reactors enrich U-238 to U-235?
DagwoodIII@piefed.social 8 hours ago
Looking at the illustration, it’s hard to figure out year it was drawn. The artist is creating a ‘future house.’ Also, it’s not clear if this is an educational comic, or one for entertainment.
99% of the people today ahve some idea of what ‘gamma rays’ are, but we all accept that they can turn a normal man into The Hulk.
fartographer@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
*Licks powerbox*
GeeDubHayduke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 hours ago
Title… “that’s what she said!”
bstix@feddit.dk 1 hour ago
I guess renewables are still cheaper.
At least personally and anecdotally, because it doesn’t happen often, but it has happened more than once, that I have purchased electricity at negative prices due to overflow from renewables