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Comment by timthelion | Hacker News Reader

Nuclear powered domestic water heaters. You could have heated your home just by pumping water through a radio active pipe section. It would have been very cheep, carbon neutral, and relatively safe (no risk of chernobl style meltdowns). Trouble is disposal and security.

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That would require commercial availability of large amounts of radioactive materials. Anyone could make a dirty bomb or maybe worse, be the next Radioactive Boy Scout and contaminate their own neighborhood without even meaning to, or being detected, unless always on Geiger counters became standard like CO detectors.

I think I could live without hot water instead of this.

I did read a while back about people one day replacing gas-based domestic water heaters with microwave-based ones. That never happened either.

This seems like an extremely hard sell. It's a heat source you can't modulate, and what's the effect of neutron absorbtion on water?

European water based radiators have regulators built into them and can heat with water anywhere from 40 all the way up to 120C (steam). They regulate the flow based on the room temperature and configuration.

I'm talking about the radioactive source itself. I know what a radiator is.

(do you understand what I mean about not being able to modulate the output of radioactive decay? Or are you proposing an actual reactor?)

What will you do with all the radioactive piping and water that you produce?

The water isn't in direct contact with the radioactive material and does not become radioactive itself? Its not like the water normally expelled from nuclear powerplants is radioactive.

What is in direct contact with the water? I assume the water is heated conductively by another material that absorbs the radiation and is heated. What material is used to for this shielding and heating?

Ceramic coated lead?

The lead turns into bismuth, the bismuth into polonium. And if you don't run it above the annealing temperature, you have to care about the neutrons creating internal stresses from directly dislocating the atoms.

What's the attenuation rate of neutrons by the shielding? I find it hard to believe it would be 100% with none passing into the piping or water

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