[Arm-netbook] How about an opensource nuclear reactor?

[Christopher Havel]

LOL. That's not going to last a hot minute. Any country worth its salt has
very strong laws on the books prohibiting this sort of thing, because of
what can happen very easily if you don't get it exactly right. Even
universities and research labs and the like, even if they're *part* of the
government, have to get special permission to touch that stuff... nuclear
anything is not something to be taken lightly, and enough important people
know that so that it's regulated *incredibly* tightly. I'm told that if you
have nuke clearance with the US gov't, for example, the US Military has to
know *exactly* where you are at all times, as in, if you need to use a
portapotty they just about want the serial # off the side of the box, and
what second of what minute you went in and came back out. Yikes.

There was a kid a few decades ago who tried to do up a civvie reactor on
his own, some years ago, here in the US. I'm not sure what state... he got
a lot of press at the time, and a book later on, but the press has newer,
bigger things to deal with right now and I never bought the book and it was
quite some time ago anyways. That said... apparently he got ahold of a
truly insane number of smoke detectors without his parents noticing, and
got enough Americium-241 together as a result (juuuuust barely) to get a
reaction going. Put the whole thing together in a backyard shed, literally.
He got found out pretty quickly, though, because he either hadn't studied
enough or was too inept otherwise, to realize that he had to freaking
*cool* this monstrosity... it was apparently something of an IR beacon, on
the intensity level of gazing point-blank into a carbon-arc searchlamp...
ooooops! I'm not sure what wound up happening to him, but I can't imagine
it was as simple as "okay we're taking this away and don't do it again" ;)
Cops generally aren't that nice... especially with things that are issues
both of public safety and national security at the same time, like he had
conjured up...

But yeah that's how *that* went.

On Mon, Mar 9, 2020 at 6:16 PM David Niklas <doark at mail.com> wrote:

> Dear luke,
>
> Such a project might not be ligament (I'm not a physicist), but people
> seem to be taking it seriously.
> As of this writing 2 of the files are still missing "PRIMARY LOOP" and
> "STEAM TURBINE".
>
> https://www.open-100.com/
>
> David
>
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