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Comment by Ididntdothis | Hacker News Reader

If these proliferate how do we deal with fuel being stolen and used by terrorists or similar? I don’t know how realistic a dirty bomb scenario but right now nuclear fuel is tightly controlled in a small number of locations. With these reactors it would spread out into more locations and potentially into countries that don’t take maintenance and disposal seriously.

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Require long lead times for planning and coordination, ensuring that they would almost certainly be caught before using them.

As for dirty bombs, the mafia takes low-grade radioactive waste and dumps it in the ocean.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/sep/16/shipwreck-wast...

Given that ordinary materials like fertilizers have been used to create bombs, I would say that the mass availability and distribution of nuclear material creates a near certainty that it will end up in the wrong hands sooner or later. And it's a problem because that means that each and every micro reactor will need to have very strict and expensive security. The security cost alone makes this a non starter compared to using batteries and solar. We already have those all over the place and it's not a problem. Also theft is going to be an issue. If micro reactors fit on a truck, those trucks could be hijacked. Or a deployed unit could be stolen. So, yes, I would say this is a show stopper.

I think that if dirty bombs were a real threat, we would see more of the people who would want to use them doing more traditional bombing first/now, and bomb attacks are extremely rare.

I think this is perhaps more movie-plot threat than real risk.

Extremely rare in the west in 2019. Not rare in some other parts of the world with an unstable security situation. They were also common in the UK in the 90s and earlier during the troubles, so it's not like western countries are magically immune from instability.

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