From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Tue Apr 08 2003 - 17:53:55 MDT
On Tue, 8 Apr 2003, Adrian Tymes wrote:
> Now if only someone could
> come up with a way to do nuclear propulsion in the
> Earth's atmosphere that could adequately address
> environmental concerns. Perhaps something that either
> loses its radioactivity or manufactures heavy cocoons
> for itself upon exposure to oxygen?
This can be solved using a combination of nanorobots
with breeder reactors/accelerators. The nanorobots
run around sucking up everything -- air, soil, etc.
grab stuff an atom at a time, presumably using
Drexlerian "molecular sorters", then deliver it a
Freitasian "single-proton massometer" for weight analysis.
The radioactive isotopes get stored for transport, the
non-radioactive isotopes just get returned to the
environment (obviously one has to do this on a massive
scale and have some safety protocols so the nanorobots
don't attempt to sort something that is "alive".
Then the nanorobots, once their storage tanks are full,
travel to the nearest breeder facility, unload the
tanks where the breeder protocols turn all the radioactive
isotopes back into non-radioactive isotopes. [Note --
and I didn't even have to use "magic" physics -- just
the plain old vanilla physics... :-)]
It would be interesting to speculate that using this
approach one might be able to remove all of the radioactive
carbon and potassium from the environment -- slow turnover
within the human body would probably decrease our endogenous
radioactivity exposure perhaps reducing our rate of double
strand breaks and lengthening our "natural" lifespan.
Robert
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