Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Run Your Laptop On Nuclear Energy

Posted by timothy on from the mind-the-jewels-please dept.

Reader zymano points to this news.com artcle on innovations in portable power sources. Would you feel comfortable with a radioactive power source inside your laptop or cellphone?

3 of 594 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Nuclear powered cellphone by Chris+Burke · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In all seriousness if the manufacturers can guarentee that its safe I'm all for portable power that lasts 200 years.

    Screw that. I want the manufacturer, a government agency, and a dozen or so independent non-profit organizations to guarantee it is safe. I mean, we saw well letting the company tell us what is safe worked with tobacco. ;)

    But do that, and yeah, I'd use one. :)

    --

    The enemies of Democracy are
  2. Nuclear? It'll never happen. by AB3A · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Obligatory joke: "My BRAIN? Why, that's my second favorite organ!"

    People are scared of what RF radiation could do to them. That's RF, as in Radio Frequency. Telling them that it's non-ionizing is pointless. They only understand "radiation" and they don't want to understand any more.

    Now someone is proposing a nuclear battery. I wish them luck. With so many people believing that putting a cell phone next to their heads is dangerous today, wait until interest groups discover that the battery they're using is a nuclear device.

    Once again, we have what is probably a technically elegant solution being offered to a seriously ignorant public. Expect the risks to be blown entirely out of proportion while "harmless" chemical batteries are added by the ton to landfills every day. Thank-you Jeremy Rifkin. Thank-you Paul Brodur. Thank-you Nancy Wertheimer. Thank-you Rachel Carson. You and your successors have taught a generation of idiots all about fear-mongering. Now we can all pay for the wages of stupidity and political grandstanding.

    Meanwhile, because of our societal phobias we'll continue making a mess of our environment.



    (Rifkin: Fearmonger on Genetically modified foods. Brodur: wrote the "Zapping of America", a treatise on RF phobias and science by innunendo. Nancy Werthiemer: Co-author of a seriously flawed paper on powerline exposure and lukemia. Rachael Carson: "Silent Spring"; although her cause was reasonable, her facts were not.)

    --
    Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
  3. Already happening in other devices... by Hyped01 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Anyone have any idea how long radioactive isotopes have been used in smoke detectors and similar in home devices? Much less how much radiation still leaks from "low emmision" TV's and monitors - or projection TVs?

    Check it out, then tell me if this is a big deal. (it's not.)

    Rob

    --

    WebMaster:
    BinFeeds
    XXX Thumbnailed Image Newsgroups but