Of all the things to send adrift at sea, you wouldn’t think a nuclear reactor would be one. History has already written several oceanic disasters, though luckily none of them nuclear. Meanwhile, many advancements have hopefully been implemented to prevent further disasters, as state-sponsored Russian nuclear power company Rosenergoatom, in collaboration with shipping corporation LLC Baltiysky Zavod Shipbuilding, have plans for the world’s first floating nuclear power plant.

An eye raiser indeed, the Akademik Lomonosov is set to be online by 2019. This atomic barge will feature two KLT-40 Naval Propulsion reactors that will have the ability to produce 70 megawatts (MW) of electricity, enough to produce power, heat and desalination for cities with populations around 200,000. Initial construction of the Akademik Lomonosov began in 2007. It’s cost is an estimated $232 million. When up and running, it will serve the town it was constructed in, Severodvinsk, as well as the plant that built it.

Concerns around the floating plant are numerous, with many writing it off as a floating nuclear weapon. The uranium involved, however, has only been lightly enriched, as opposed to the fully-enriched that powers other Russian nuclear power plants. This measure was taken to prevent the uranium from possible hijacking for use in a nuclear weapon. And in true vague Russian fashion, when asked about large problems that may occur with the plant, the ship’s owner replied that it would be “resilient in a disaster.” Comfort is something that has historically escaped Russian culture.

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Atomic power is like the unpopular kid on the playground these days, so it’s easy to forget that it was once the superstar of the energy world. Around the 1940s and 1950s, kids were encouraged to learn about atomic energy and even play with atomic-themed toys. The guns above didn’t use any real atomic power, of course, but they were labeled as “atomic” and marketed toward kids in the 50s and 60s.

But there were more reality-based atomic toys as well. The above Atomic Energy Kit came with tiny amounts of uranium and “uranium chemical” as well as a piece of paper imbued with a low concentration of radium. Along with the kit was an instruction manual that taught kids all about the fascinating subject of radioactivity.

The short-lived Atomic Energy Lab from Gilbert Toys allowed kids to carry out simple experiments with a handful of materials like uranium ore, a cloud chamber and a Geiger counter. Thanks to its price and its complexity it was only produced for two years – but if you’re lucky enough to find one in good condition today it is worth its weight in uranium.

If you were lucky enough to be a kid in the 1950s you might have gotten to play the Uranium Rush board game. Gameplay involved moving to plots of land on the board and deciding whether to auction them off or test them for uranium with the enclosed toy Geiger counter. The player who amassed the most money by the time all of the plots were sold was the winner…and presumably learned a thing or two about its nuclear properties.

The Library of Science Radiation Detection kit came with an assembly-required Geiger counter and a small sample of uranium ore. A pair of pith balls were included so kids could make their own electroscope, an electrical measuring instrument. Given parents’ reluctance to expose their kids to radiation these days, this toy would probably never make it to modern toy store shelves.

The post They’re the Bomb: 5 Awesome Toys From the Atomic Age first appeared on Gajitz.

Always looking for better and more efficient ways to power our stuff, researchers at the University of Missouri recently created the smallest, most efficient nuclear battery ever. They chose to work with a radioisotope battery rather than a chemical battery because the radioisotope battery provides a drastically higher power density. Its secret lies in its liquid semiconductor; solid semiconductors would be harmed by the radiation, but the team believes they’ve solved that problem.

But isn’t using nuclear energy in batteries sort of…dangerous? Not really, it turns out. They’re already being used in underwater systems, pacemakers and various space satellites. The UM team’s nuclear battery is very small – about the size of a penny – but they want to go smaller. Based on their findings so far, they believe they can make the battery even more powerful and shrink it to less than the width of a human hair.

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