Recent content by Jeremy Thomson

"Glow in the dark paint was applied to the lock, so a soldier could unlock the miniature bomb in the dark". I'm thinking that its unlikely 'glow in the dark paint' would be tritium based. More likely radium, which was used up to WWII for instrument dials etc. But I don't know. Backpack nukes...

There appears to be much myth about the 'divers' that swam through radioactive water to drain the water underneath reactor 4 at Chernobyl. This History channel link alludes to some of the myth https://www.history.co.uk/article/the-real-story-of-the-chernobyl-divers. It also links to a youtube...

I've been watching "The Expanse" and considered, if the spaceships are some sort of fusion powered drive, why aren't they covered in radiator panels to reject all the heat from the reactor/drive system? How many square meters of radiator panels would a 20MW (thermal) fission reactor require? An...

I'm looking to refute a YouTube video that states "uncontrollable fission is continuing under the site" I'm sure if this were the case there would be reports from the CTBTO (Comprehensive Test Ban treaty Organistion) of elevated readings of noble fission products (Xenon 135). Does anyone know...

You often read of how fusion is clean and has no radioactive waste. How much of a simplification is that? I believe spent fuel from fission is about half transuranics and half fission products. Am I right in that fusion 'spent fuel' will be isotopes of helium? Which if radioactive have very...

I'm wondering if a fusion reactor would make its walls more radioactive thru neutron activation than a fission reactor, for a given amount of energy. It seems to me that (hydrogen) fusion produces most of its energy as neutrons that are unlikely to absorbed by the sparse near vacuum plasma...

Is there a trend in pebble bed reactors towards smaller pebble sizes? The smallest conceivable would be a carbon buckyball encasing a (single?) uranium atom. This Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endohedral_fullerene) says two cerium atoms have been encapsulated in a c80...

49 years old always had an interest in things nuclear. The internet and web has now been a boon to learning more, I have a Wikipedia education in things nuclear but just high school and a years programming courses education level. NZ is such a rabidly anti-nuclear country being pro-nuke is my...