Scientists design nuclear fuel cells known as a Trisofuel, the size of poppy seeds, to live in space.

ruford1976@lemmy.worldbanned from sitebanned from site to World News@lemmy.world – 245 points –
Moon base: Bangor scientists design fuel to live in space
bbc.com
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This is a bit of a tangent, but the damage that bigotry has done to human progress is staggering. The scientist leading the team is apparently a black Zimbabwean woman. Not so long ago, it would have been impossible for someone like that to lead a team, and that immense talent would have gone entirely to waste.

Think of all the highly intelligent people who were unable to go to university or perform to the best of their abilities because some racist moron assumed they were too stupid. Think of all the women who are scared off pursuing a scientific career to sexist BS.

Think how (overeducated) morons still run entire countries or huge companies, thanks to privilege they don't deserve, while at least one of the cleaners is twice as smart and a better human being than they'll ever be.

“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” - Stephen Jay Gould

Well said. We don’t talk about this very real byproduct of bigotry nearly enough. This is one of the best arguments in favor of affirmative action, imo.

I’m genuinely curious to hear the opinions of the folks who are downvoting your comment.

Sciencetits

I hope this isn't how we refer to women in science.

(Ps you can edit titles on Lemmy)

Sciencetits and Sciencedicks

Sciencetits : disease cures, Space travel and much more

ScienceDicks : Petrol and plastic companies.

the day we choose tits over dicks our society can progress.

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Bangor University has designed nuclear fuel cells, the size of poppy seeds, to produce the energy needed to sustain life there.

As space technology advances at a rapid pace, the BBC was given exclusive access to the Bangor University Nuclear Futures Institute's laboratory.

The Bangor team, which is a world leader on fuels, works with partners such as Rolls Royce, the UK Space Agency, Nasa and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US.

Earlier this month, India made a historic landing near the Moon's south pole with its robotic probe Chandrayaan-3.

One of the mission's major goals is to hunt for water-based ice which, scientists say, could support human habitation on the Moon in future.

The geopolitical author and journalist, Tim Marshall, said the breakthrough over fuel was a step towards a global race to the lunar south pole.


The original article contains 778 words, the summary contains 140 words. Saved 82%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

yo thanks bro

you comment in every post

i admire your dedication.

1 more...

It sounds like we're staring to catch up to the Fallout universe.

It would be nice to have one of those nuclear potatoes to run my house.

Also can we get Nuka-Cola Quantum please?

I always thought Nukaa-Cola Quantum would taste like Baja Blast fresh from the soda machine from your local taco bell.

I have it under good authority that Nuka-Cola Quantum gives you the same effect as downing a fistful of sugar and punching yourself in the head.

So it's exactly like it would taste like Baja Blast from your local taco bell... only this time after 3am after drinking or getting high.

It's almost not a flavor but a feeling

And they have rolled tacos back…Baja blast and rolled tacos, the best combination

The reason cited for nuclear propulsion enabling us to get to places like Mars faster is wrong. It's not the amount of thrust, but the ability to use constant thrust longer (because we can fuel longer burns). It's why the plot device of the Epstein drive in The Expanse opened up the whole solar system - they can do a burn for days and use up very little fuel. We're nowhere near that, but nuclear would be far better than conventional rockets that have very limited burn time plus have heavy fuel to carry with them.

Sounds like a recipe for another Moonbase Alpha incident.
(from the Space: 1999 television series)

Plus, I suppose that the small size of the payload will make the potential for widespread radiation poisoning lower in case of an accident.

Small reactors often don't actually have enough fuel to actually melt their containment. And I'm talking Small Modular Reactors in the low MW range.

These pellets would be basically immune to anything even resembling a meltdown unless you had hundreds of them in one space.

No, the risk when dealing with items this small is orphan source. i.e. the loss of a pellet into the wider world.

Orphan source accidents are terrifying but also of very small scale. Usually one or two people who don't know what they've found and lose body parts to it, or just die.

Orphan sources are almost always from improperly disposed of medical equipment. Including the single worst case I can think of.

That was horrifying and so sad to watch. It also made me realise that most of us probably don't know enough about identifying nuclear contaminants.

I feel like even if we think we know of nuclear contaminants, identifying it and procedures on what to do in these situations should really be compulsory education for everyone.

The worst part about that was that after exposure, it really seemed like a best case scenario. From what the video showed, it was identified about as quickly as you could hope, and authorities responded well. It’s it we’re missed or they didn’t respond like they did, it could have been much, much worse.

On the other hand, the people who knew there was an orphaned source and delayed recovering it for so long, apought to be in jail

I wouldn't mind a more knowledgeable population when it comes to nuclear physics.

If treated with respect, it's the safest, and best tool we have to power our future.

Instead, we get a weird mix of fearmongering and ignorance that actually makes us all less safe.

although nuclear technology is high risk and high reward.

i think we should give it a chance who knows when thorium based reactors come along?

Still waiting on thorium and fusion reactors to be a thing. If nuclear is a necessity in the meanwhile, the least they can do is to build them in a place far away enough from the general population and natural resources, that way the containment zone in case of a breach would be a lesser loss.

I really hope that thorium and fusion get the r&d & implementation they deserve. It seems we as a species have given nuclear a bad rap because the consequences of nuclear power when they occur are simply more visible than it's counter parts.

It sure seems safer than fossil fuels.

What is this article even on about? Is it talking about TRISO fuel? That's not something new (it'd be new if they were talking about a way of manufacturing TRISO particles efficiently/with fewer failed particles). Why are they spelling it as "trisofuel", I can't find anything online using that spelling that isn't this (rather empty) article or copy/paste versions.