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Comment by walrus01 | Hacker News Reader

Serious question, do you actually think that if you distribute millions of small nuclear reactors to homeowners geographically spread out around all of North America, 0.000% of them will be dangerously mentally ill, criminally reckless or inclined to terrorist like activity? Based on the frequency and number of mass shooter type incidents, (or like, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians) this would be a very naive view.

It doesn't require a criminally minded 3rd party coming onto someone's "safe" property to do something horrible with a sawzall and/or oxy-acetylene cutting torch.

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have you never heard of tamper-proof containers? mess with it, it’s useless and you go to jail for a long time?

Plus, they’re ubiquitous, you don’t know who has one, max damage is minimal even worst case — go fish!

That's a very optimistic view of humanity that I can't say I share. If you give a sufficiently motivated person enough isolation and time, they can cut into just about anything. And possibly deal with cleaning up the results of any internal tamperproof countermeasures. In a world that contains people like the Las Vegas mass shooter or those who conducted the 2015 attacks in Paris, handing out isotopes to the ordinary person seems like a recipe for disaster.

We live in a world where multiple people are killed every year by tipping vending machines over onto themselves and you propose to make nuclear reactors a mass market consumer good that goes in everyone's garage?

We have microwave ovens. They’re pretty safe. Imagine something as safe as that. We can do it.

But I can’t disagree that it’s more exciting to imagine terror dreams.

First: microwaves are only safe if you don't mess with them, a bunch of people get killed by tinkering with their high-voltage transformers (at least 35 US deaths from one specific usecase alone in the last decade, see https://www.woodturner.org/Woodturner/Resources/Safety-Mater...).

A big potential concern with small reactors are highly toxic radionuclides; those can be much more dangerous (with LD50 far under 1mg/kg) than "ordinary toxins" like bleach or even nasty stuff like methyl isocyanate. That means expensive disposal and protection measures.

All of this is a non-concern though because there is no realistic path for nuclear reactors to compete with PV+batteries, ever. With cells already <$100/kWh and the panels being cheaper than glass windows, we will never be able to build, maintain and dispose of nuclear based reactors tech at a competitive price point, especially not with the insane current battery demand (automotive) driving technical optimisation and price competition.

> because there is no realistic path for nuclear reactors to compete with PV+batteries

It's not that in Northern climates, it's PV+batteries+Natural Gas turbines, because PV doesn't supply enough power for winter heating. In more tropical locations, you're correct.

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