So I always wondered what is the issue that countries/companies do not look on manufacturing “mini” atomic generators?
I know that there exist small atomic generators maybe but they are like the size of a house or at least of a room.
Why not using e.g 10 grams or even 1 gram of uranium or any other suitable element to make really small generators that could fit e.g inside a bike or a small car?
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Some mixed up answers here.
If you are talking about fission, there are minimum sizes to what you can use to generate power. It is not the same thing as the bare sphere critical masses that people are quoting; it can be smaller than that if you use moderators and reflectors. But to actually generate net power in a controlled way requires more than a minimum amount. It requires you to boil a substantial amount of water, and put that steam through a turbine, and then have a cycle for replacing the water in the reactor so it doesn’t overheat (and continuing the cycle). Even without safety equipment and shielding, this is still a lot bigger than “mini.” The smallest modular reactors that have been seriously proposed are about the size of a car. That’s pretty small, and it’s _just_ the reactor part — it outputs steam if you put water into it, but you still need a turbine, etc., to turn that steam into electricity.
Why are there minimum sizes? Because you need to create the conditions for the chain reaction. Again, it’s not as simple as there being a magic single size for that — it depends on a lot of factors — but there are minimums that are imposed by nature.
There are also radioactive elements which can be used in radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTGs). These are not nuclear reactors; they take the heat of a very-radioactive element and convert it into electricity. This is not a great way to generate power if you are not in outer space. Or to put it another way, there are way better ways to generate power available to you if you are not in outer space. RTGs work great in some contexts (outer space) because they are self-sufficient and last a long time. But they don’t give you a lot of power output by itself. For anything not in outer space it is usually easier to just have a big battery and then recharge it based on power sources that give you a lot more electricity.
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