Quote:
Originally Posted by Minuteman37
In This thread we discuss possible means of generating power after the end via nuclear energy, as well as how it would look, and the feasibility/resource requirements of such an endeavor.
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The Reed Research Reactor (RRR) is a 250 kW pool type reactor operated by less than 50 people with less than 3 years training and experience, because it's the nuclear reactor at Reed College in Oregon run by undergraduates. see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_Research_Reactor
The RRR implies that the minimum size for an AtE community with access to nuclear power is about 2500 - 5000 people, with each household getting enough power to run a couple of incandescent lightbulbs.
It looks like you could scale up the power without significantly increasing the staff, because Texas A&M's reactor is a 1 MW design with a staff of 30:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_...Science_Center
There are, or have been, a lot of research reactors in the US. It looks like they don't provide a lot of power but also don't require a lot of staff. A medium sized community could easily be built around one - a pair of 75W incandescent lightbults per household isn't much by 21st century standards but it would make for a very rich community post-AtE. Fueling the reactor could be a tricky problem, requiring dedicated and technologically sophisticated scavengers who can recover fuel rods from other, larger, reactors.