Hacker News Reader

Comment by crmd | Hacker News Reader

> Those in favor of mobile nuclear power for the battlefield claim it will provide nearly unlimited, low-carbon energy without the need for vulnerable supply convoys.

Imagine the situation we would be in if the US military had been using nuclear power supplies at (formerly) our bases in Afghanistan.

I’m a fan of nuclear power but battlefields are the last place I want to see it.

View on HN

To be fair, the things the Taliban seized were from the “Afghan government” that we had given them. I don’t think there would have been any mobile reactors left for the same reason there weren’t any stealth aircraft.

This is what I think the most often overlooked problem inherent to nuclear power in any form: whenever you create a nuclear reactor, you are betting on future people to handle it correctly. And not only during it's operational life of say 20-30 years, but also during the ages or millennia afterwards. This is quite a risky bet, as no one can predict the future. And centuries without war and/or other catastrophic events have been quite rare.

> whenever you create a nuclear reactor, you are betting on future people to handle it correctly

The youth these days really isn't so different from the youth thirty years ago

Reminds me of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-time_nuclear_waste_warnin...

Far less than 10,000 years ago, humans likely would've written similar messages on things of importance to deter thieves, and we just ignore them now as curses. How does one warn people of the future about genuinely hazardous, long-lasting materials without relying on language (which will certainly change on that time scale) and without the future generation dismissing it as bullshit curses?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com