Dr. Robert (Bob) Novella
speaker
1,941 appearances
6 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 19 Sep
Dr. Robert (Bob) Novella’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 6 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 3.
Appearances
NASA did a project called Kilopower, which was creating uranium-235 nuclear reactors, and they were going to be 1 kilowatt up to 10 kilowatts, and they could last 10 to 15 years.
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A 10-kilowatt system could do, say, three households.
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If you had four of those, you could do like a Mars base, I mean a moon base.
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They'll put multiple.
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So my take, though, on this, Jay, this most recent news item was that they were going for something big.
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far bigger than, say, 10-kilowatt units.
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Did they mention megawatt scale, or is it all kilowatt scale?
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So this, to me, seems more midterm, whereas this Kilopower project that they finished a couple years ago was more near-term.
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By the late 2020s, I think they'll be ready.
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They've already done a demo model in 2018.
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They did a small scale, and it worked.
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It was efficient.
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It was safe.
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So I think in the near term, we're good with this.
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But in the more midterm, I think they're trying to scale it up for even bigger outposts or even on spaceships.
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But that's kind of like what kilopower is.
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I mean it's taking a uranium-235 core that's as big as a paper towel cardboard.
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I mean that's like this big.
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And it takes the thermal energy, the thermal power, and pipes it through a Stirling engine to come out with electrical power.
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And it seems like a really, really cool design.
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Showing 681–700 of 1,941 · page 35 of 98
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