• @marcos
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    11 day ago

    You either spend a truckload of resources during decades to make a bomb that explodes releasing the same energy humanity spends in two months, or you spend a truckload of resources doing the end task at a slower pace for decades.

    The later is guaranteed to require a smaller truckload.

    • @[email protected]
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      1 day ago

      Why is the second guaranteed to be smaller?
      We know how nuclear bombs work. The majority of the energy comes from nuclear fusion, a highly exothermic process, that can (in the foreseeable future) only be used in bombs.
      If we don’t need to drop the bomb, but rather assemble it in place, it can just use deuterium as a fusion fuel. Deuterium can be distilled from normal water for much less energy that it generates in fusion.

      Edit: mixed up fusion and fission in the first statement

      • @marcos
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        11 day ago

        The majority of the energy comes from nuclear fission

        Yes, from an extremely inefficient fission reaction that can be improved by an order of magnitude by doing it slowly in a reactor.

        • @[email protected]
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          11 day ago

          Mixed up fission and fusion there, they sound so similar in English.
          The comment talks about fusion.

          • @marcos
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            11 day ago

            Most of the energy does not come from fusion.