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Comment by poszlem

20 hours ago

Another huge reason, I bet is that it's possible for me to have my own solar system, but not really possible to have my own little reactor.

> it's possible for me to have my own solar system

Finally, some much needed progress towards Sagan's apple pie.

If its any consolation, with your solar system you have a shared massive fusion reactor

The simplest form of a nuclear reactor is some small sphere of purified heavy metal put onto a cavity on a thick Be sphere and covered by another piece of the same metal. The reactor can be started up and shut down by lowering or lifting the top piece using a flathead screwdriver shoved between two pieces, which can kill anybody nearby if dropped and the pieces go ultra super critical. That has to be a lot simpler than even a basic solar cell by itself.

The nature of disruptive solutions is that they can be adopted easily at the bottom of the market - which means in this case people like you rather than at the centrally planned utility.