Could you imagine a world where we first used atomic power for good and not evil?
this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2026
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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.
The first man made reactor (there's an extinct naturally occurring one) was created in 1942 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.
First use: glowing paint
Second use: cancer
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.
Chernobyl happened through the incompetence of leadership, not because they thought it was "completely safe".
It's a good thing leadership incompetence is something that only ever happens once
And only in USSR!
Incompetence AND overconfidence, cause those reactors were the latest generation and considered completely safe.
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.
Oh yes, you'd consider it safe, but you'd probably also be aware of its faults and shortcomings. Now I think I read it years ago in a book about the incident, but even reading the Wikipedia page I think we are both right: some of those working there were not even trained specifically for nuclear reactors, cause part of the technologies were considered state secrets.
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.
The watches were radium, not uranium.
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.
people down voting you haven't considered the cost of dealing with the waste. Consider how long and expensive Hanford Washington cleanup 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.
That world, that wonderful utopic world... we could weaponize it!
So was the popular conception back then that power was somehow magically transferred directly from uranium to the power grid?
Miniature breeder reactor
You would drop in the uranium fuel source and it would be used to create more fuel.
Short version is most early nuclear science focused on breeder type reactors but they were abandoned when it was found that more conventional designs are a lot more feasible for producing weapons grade material.
The weapons grade stuff is U-235, right? Do conventional nuclear reactors enrich U-238 to U-235?
Uranium 235 or plutonium 239, may be completed with Hydrogen for more energy release: deuterium and tritium.
AFIK natural uranium is mainly centrifugated for the heavier 238 and lighter 235 to separate. Enriched uranium is just having a higher percentage of 235.
Plutonium 238 is man made in reactors
may be completed with Hydrogen for more energy release
Uh, that understates things a little bit. Hydrogen bombs (which utilize fission for triggering the fusion reaction) are generally a few orders of magnitude more powerful than fission bombs. The opposite is more accurate: fusion bombs that use spent Uranium as a tamper roughly double their yield.
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.
Wouldn't all but the largest RTGs struggle to power more than a few incandescent light bulbs, though? Looking at the table on Wikipedia, their output is usually only from a few dozen to a few hundred watts.
It was 60 years ago. If they put same effort to it as they put to computers you would have one in your pocket.
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)
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 https://www.ukaea.org/case-studies/carbon-14-diamond-battery/ or watch video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgGVt4sUnnw
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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.
*Licks powerbox*