Dubious 1980's in-home nuclear reactor ad from Japan
By Joshua Topolsky 
posted Jun 23rd 2007 10:00AM
posted Jun 23rd 2007 10:00AM
posted Jun 23rd 2007 10:00AM
What you get from playing Tetris
A new study published by the big thinkers at Mind Research Network has found that "practicing Tetris" can improve brain efficiency and lead to a thicker cortex.
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Great Idea! But maybe i'll get my neighbors together and instead of us each buying our own individual unit, we'll pool our money together and build a single unit, only bigger!
But you know I'm thinking maybe we should buy that empty lot outside of town and put it there, instead of the kitchen. Just so there's no chance for any interference. Then we'll just run some power cables back to our street!
And then maybe if that works we'll build an even bigger one some day and sell the excess power for profit, so folks who can't afford their own reactors or don't want one in their backyard or kitchen can buy our energy for cheap!
Yay!
thats just fuc*ed up man. LOL 'people near the device may, on rare occasions, experience dizziness or a tingling sensation in the hands or feet....temporarily discontinue use' I love it how they say temporarily, not just 'shut the god damn thing off, its giving you cancer'.
From the 1980s this is obviously fake, but if you go back to the 1950s you can find more-genuine sounding proposals of this sort from the USA:
"The basic questions of design, material and shielding, in combining a nuclear reactor with a home boiler and cooling unit, no longer are problems... The system would heat and cool a home, provide unlimited household hot water, and melt the snow from sidewalks and driveways. All that could be done for six years on a single charge of fissionable material costing about $300." –- Robert Ferry, executive of the U.S. Institute of Boiler and Radiator Manufacturers, 1955.
Unfortunately I have been unable to find an original source for this quote, so I fear that it is probably an urban myth.
this is awesome. im pretty sure i can get a used one on ebay. that would be teh R0x0r5!
タマネギ
I am sure that this is from the Japanese equivalent of The Onion.
Where to sign up?
It's "1980s'" not "1980's"; In other words, it doesn't belong to the year 1980, but rather it's from the 80s.
The fine print on the right side of the white section pretty much says "the product depicted in this ad is fiction. Therefore, please understand that the product, as well as the company, does not exist." (rough guess as some of the characters are blurry...)
Cool. Now i can name my house Pripyat.
Better than naming it Chernobyl.
family size a-bomb?
so this must be selling well in iran then?
Its a funny parody.
Its named the "Chernobyl" Household Nuclear Generator after all.
I'm guessing the theory behind the way this worked is the same way that those pacemakers work on nuclear batteries.
so no chance of explosions... just chance of slowly dying....
aren't we also slowly dying?
que sad music.
Sad but true, the mortality rate among humans is still 100%
For the 80's, this is most likely a sham. Back in the 50's we had such fun US government backed projects as, "Let's dig water canals using controlled nuclear explosives" and "I bet we could use this technology to pump natural gas deep underground." The only two nuclear tests east of the Mississippi were underground and used for natural gas extraction. They "just happened" to find out the gas became irradiated and couldn't be used. ... Duh!
The little text on the bottom right (with the star over it) says that both the product and the company are fictional.
Exterminate! Exterminate!
DALEKS!
Hmmm... wonder what electricity goes for in Japan?
Saw a neat "green" show, can't remember where (PBS?)
The Japanese family had a natural gas powered fuel cell in their apartment providing electricity (I think it was a 2kW unit)
Love to know if those are available here in the U.S.
It says it's fiction on the right side of the picture in Japanese.
I was suprised.
Some Japanese company actually makes self contained / self monitoring buriable small nuclear reactors for research stations and the like... Can't remember who...
Idiots, Chernobyl is in Ukraine! Neither Engadget nor 22 above commentators don't know that!
After the US's testing of the A-bomb at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, you'd figure that the Japanese wouldn't have anything to do with nuclear gadgets.
@ Dennis
Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union at the time of the explosion (1986). So there's no reason to be calling everyone idiots.
Seriously weak, Engadget.
"beatboxing" & Chernobyl
Two signs of obliviousness on the same page. Just because your lunch money is no longer stolen on a daily basis does not mean that you are successful.
Even the phone number is a joke. 0235 (from Uranium-235, I suppose) 37564 > minagoroshi = annihiliation/holocaust, etc.