Wouldn’t all but the largest RTGs struggle to power more than a few incandescent light bulbs, though? Looking at the table on Wikipedia, their output is usually only from a few dozen to a few hundred watts.
It was worse than that. Our understanding of radiation took awhile. While Uranium glass is probably safe I wouldn’t go using it regularly. A lot of women (“radium girls”) suffered from cancers induced by licking their brushes when painting luminescing instruments. This comic looks like 50s era when post the bomb sci-fi was full of “atomics” as the stuff of the future.
So was the popular conception back then that power was somehow magically transferred directly from uranium to the power grid?
What grid? It looks like the “power box” on the wall is generating power for that house all by itself, no transmission necessary.
Considering that the smallest operating nuclear reactor ever made was this big…
…and that critical mass is a thing, I can only assume the “power box” was some kind of RTG.
Wouldn’t all but the largest RTGs struggle to power more than a few incandescent light bulbs, though? Looking at the table on Wikipedia, their output is usually only from a few dozen to a few hundred watts.
It was 60 years ago. If they put same effort to it as they put to computers you would have one in your pocket.
RTGs aren’t as limited by technological investment as they are constrained by fundamental physics.
It was worse than that. Our understanding of radiation took awhile. While Uranium glass is probably safe I wouldn’t go using it regularly. A lot of women (“radium girls”) suffered from cancers induced by licking their brushes when painting luminescing instruments. This comic looks like 50s era when post the bomb sci-fi was full of “atomics” as the stuff of the future.
It’s like those watch batteries, but it’s uranium and powers the house.