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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10 grams of pure uranium or plutonium is going to be 0.5mL (the volume of 10 drops of water) of metal that might feel slightly warm, but probably not enough to even notice. What are you going to power with that? The big power stations aren’t magic; they have tonnes and so can get hot enough to make steam to spin turbines. Nuclear fission just doesn’t scale down that far.
Of course it’s also both extremely poisonous chemically and an extremely dangerous source of radiation. Having millions of these in the world guarantees bad accidents whatever precautions are taken but a bigger issue is going to be people trying (and probably succeeding) in making things like dirty bombs.
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