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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   3399 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for June 7, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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"When Chernobyl reached peak x power during its explosion it was about 350 gigawatts for a fraction of a second. This is 700 gigawatts continuously, right, it's a non-stop Chernobyl going on."

Chernobyl also released radiation from reactions that have taken place in the months before, so it's not really a good approximation of harm that'd be caused by using nuclear saltwater rockets for space launches.

It is, however, in essence similar to Orion launches, and the radiation release there was found to not be particularly bad by the engineers worrying about it. I'm not sure what approaches they used, but if they were using LNTR and got a figure of "may give 1 person cancer" then it's probably not a big deal.

In any case, it's one of those questions that can't be answered without a good simulation.

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