this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2025
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So I need 80 tons of it in my firebox?
Well, you'd then have another problem. Unlike coal/wood/oil fuel, you can't turn off radioactive decay.
You'd have megawatts (gigawatts?) of thermal energy boiling off all your water pretty quickly, and likely eventually melting down your steam engine firebox, and it would be that hot for decades!
You can boost it by hollowing out the middle and filling it with tritium, but plutonium is dense, so 80 tons will probably fit in the firebox just fine.
I feel like there's a thing that will happen when I put that much in such a comparatively small place.
It'll heat up the firebox, which is exactly what the firebox wants to happen. It's not like we're using precisely-timed explosives to briefly make the mass much more than critical and counter its desire to blow itself apart for long enough that it blows other things apart, too.