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[10ebbor10]

((OOC: There is a small fusion plant in East Anglia that produces as much power as it takes in. It is what the big plant being built in France (Or Switzerland? i cant remember) is based on. It cant produce any more than it is at the moment, as it isn't large enough.

The Jet, which is the reactor you're referring to, has managed to output at most 65% of what it requires to power up. If this is different, please come up with an article funding the claim.

plasma and Ion based engines (in fact, any space engine that isn't chemical or solid fueled) require a hell of a lot of power. Fusion produces a hell of a lot of power. I didn't mean the reactor itself being the engine, i meant it powering the thing that is the engine, whether it be electromagnetic, plasma or ion based. Also, fission safer than fusion? Fission has a whole load of things that could go wrong with it, many of them ending in meltdown (something you REALLY dont want in space). Not to mention its fuel is radioactive in the extreme. Fusion has zero chance of meltdown, and its fuels are not radioactive (or, at least, nowhere near as radioactive as plutonium and uranium). The only fission based plants that are safe are ones based on thorium as a fuel.

Fission is very, very stable. Core damage happens on a scale of 10^-7 occasions per reactor per year. (Theoretical level for Third gen, which would be the ones incorporated in spacecraft.) Besides, there are many very safe nuclear reactor designs (And a few unsafe thorium designs). And only the bare minimum of core damage incidents end in reactor meltdown (There have been like, 3 over the entire history of nuclear engineering. ).

Fusion meanwhile requires a massive amount of energy to start. Once you have an event where the reactor is shut down, for whatever reason. (Much more likely than a core failure), your ship is lost, having no power for engines or lifesupport. Besides, both standard nuclear and fusion have the problem of heat dissipation. There's a reason all nuclear reactors are build next to large bodies of water, after all.

Besides, fusion produces quite a bit of radiation, and tritium is rather radioactive.

Not sure where you got 'Fusion is dangerous' from. If a fusion plant went critical, the only thing that would happen is that the sphere containing the reaction would shear off all the bolts holing it stationary, fire upwards half a mile, spinning several thousand times per minute, before coming crashing down again. Nowhere near as dangerous as a fission plant or antimatter.

Why would it should up? Besides, the only thing that's spinning is the plasma, which in total amounts to less than 20 kg at all time. So no spinning either. At worst you get a massive shrapnel cloud as the magnets tear themselves apart. Followed by a cloud of liquid helium evaporating.

Besides, worst case scenario is a coolant ignition(Primary coolant, not the secondary). The type used in Iter is highy explosive, and could result in an incident where most of the facility is lost. Radiation leak would be limited to the installations perimeter.

and, finally, there is such thing as a fusion-fission hybrid reactor. In fact, there are a few designs floating about in real life and i think one or two may have been built or are in the process of being built.))

I'm going to need a source here.

I want a nano-bomb. All of the nanobots, tearing whatever they find into little pieces and making more of themselves. How's this for a best case scenario; we make a doomsday weapon, we fight our way to the queen or something(most of us would die on the way, of course), and then we set it off. Antimatter bomb, nano-replicators, even just a virus that the Kai have no immunity to.

Repair gun is nanite based. Using them as weapon would be a very high class warcrime, and not that effective. After all, nanites can be destroyed with a microwave.

[Rolepgeek]

[You know what else is a warcrime?]

[Nothing. It's not a warcrime, because they aren't humans. That sounds awful to say, but no human court would indite us for defeating an alien threat which was going to try and invade and quite possibly slaughter the inhabitants of earth. I also doubt there isn't a way to stop microwave radiation from defeating it. But speaking of which, why not just use that on the Kai?]

[Also, this should be of assistance.]

[Finally, remember a few things. One, we have shields(which use energy. This is sci fi physics). Two, there are psychics. Three, the aliens have organic cold fusion. This is the future, and truth has a half-life of 45 years. What we think we know and thus what we're going off now could be proved wrong tomorrow, or in 80 years, or never.]

[As for how fission and fusion could be used together...

Fusion meanwhile requires a massive amount of energy to start. Once you have an event where the reactor is shut down, for whatever reason. (Much more likely than a core failure), your ship is lost, having no power for engines or lifesupport.

Have a fission reactor as well, to start it and as a backup power source.]

[Heat dissipation is a problem in space. Disregarding the power plants, there's no atmosphere to cool off into. Thus cooling fins which would give off heat in the form of radiation would be needed(and probably light too). This could be used additionally as beacons to identify craft and their orientation to you for traffic control if communications are down, to flash in rudimentary signals, and of course would mean that ships in orbit, depending on their size, would appear to glow like stars. Light pollution anyone?]

[EDIT: Also, something I realized. Our chain gun has an RPM of 800. WWII machine guns had an RPM of 1200. There's a problem here...]

[kahn1234]

[As for how fission and fusion could be used together...

Fusion meanwhile requires a massive amount of energy to start. Once you have an event where the reactor is shut down, for whatever reason. (Much more likely than a core failure), your ship is lost, having no power for engines or lifesupport.

Have a fission reactor as well, to start it and as a backup power source.]

Hence we could use breeder reactors (essentially self sustaining fission (or fusion) reactors) that could be used as backup power sources and main power core starters. Or we could have, instead of a single reactor, 2 or more, so at least 1 is always on, ready to kickstart the other(s) also supported by either fusion or fission breeder reactors.

There are also things like super advanced batteries that could be recharged when the main power source is on, and then mostly emptied when the reactor(s) need to be restarted.

Also, remember, whether in real life of fiction, we dont really know if these problems will actually be problems in the future. In maybe 100-200 years, we'll probably have advanced nano-tech, fusion (Macro, micro and maybe even nano-scale fusion) and a whole host of other technology.

Just because something doesn't work as well as it could now doesn't mean that in several hundred years (which is when this game is set) we wont have overcome these problems and the technology could be in common use.

As for heat dissipation, it all depends on what type of fusion you use. Laser? Magnetic? Polywell? There is hot, medium and cold fusion on the table, plus the just as powerful breeder (self sustained) versions.

As for Thorium fission reactors, they are just as safe as uranium and plutonium reactors. The only reason they never caught on after their successful invention in the 1950's is because you cant easily make weapons grade material out of the byproducts. But even is fission is very safe (and i agree it is far safe than the media would have you believe), the fuel and byproducts are heavy and highly radioactive (more-so than anything involved in fusion), both negative qualities, especially in space.


Lastly, a chaingun is not a machine gun. they dont have a high rate of fire (and in fact 800RPM is pretty fast, considering the general average size of the bullets). A chaingun usually fires bullets in excess of 20mm and are mainly used as armaments on warships, attack choppers (like the Apache), armoured vehicles (like the Bradley and the Warrior) etc.


Also, Ebbor, i was wrong about Hybrid reactors being built at the moment, however they are supported by many nuclear scientists and it seems they are gaining ground and funding, judging by the big hoo-ha they are creating:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/28/hybrid_fusion_fission_nuke_waste_plan/

http://www.morningstarap.com/downloads/Fusion%20Fission.pdf

http://sites.apam.columbia.edu/SMproceedings/11.ContributedPapers/11.Manheimer.pdf

http://www.utexas.edu/news/2009/01/27/nuclear_hybrid/

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/interviews/interview/1363/

http://webberenergyblog.wordpress.com/2010/04/04/the-fusion-fission-hybrid-reactor/

http://mragheb.com/The%20Fusion%20Fission%20Hybrid%20Thorium%20Fuel%20Cycle%20Alternative.pdf

[10ebbor10]

Solar flares tend to knock everything out. And well, when your ship has space for two reactors, it's massively oversized anyway. Especially since Fusion gets more efficient the larger it gets, and hence constructing installations smaller than 2000 MW is generally not cost effective. Hence why fusion isn't really a compactable technology. Barring inventions to cold fusion or advanced plasma containment. ((Gravity could help here)) Problem is that the smaller it gets, the higher the chance for a violent runaway reaction. (Ie, nihil for any normal reactor, but a foothballsized device would either be horribly inefficient, or dangerous.)

Also, remember, whether in real life of fiction, we dont really know if these problems will actually be problems in the future. In maybe 100-200 years, we'll probably have advanced nano-tech, fusion (Macro, micro and maybe even nano-scale fusion) and a whole host of other technology.

I prefer to keep it out of the magic territory.

As for heat dissipation, it all depends on what type of fusion you use. Laser? Magnetic? Polywell? There is hot, medium and cold fusion on the table, plus the just as powerful breeder (self sustained) versions.

All types of fusion involve, at some points, hypercooled magnets, superheated plasma or other waste heat producing installations. Also doesn't take away the fact that standard fusion and fission reactors are thermal reactors, relying on steam to create power.

As for Thorium fission reactors, they are just as safe as uranium and plutonium reactors. The only reason they never caught on after their successful invention in the 1950's is because you cant easily make weapons grade material out of the byproducts. But even is fission is very safe (and i agree it is far safe than the media would have you believe), the fuel and byproducts are heavy and highly radioactive (more-so than anything involved in fusion), both negative qualities, especially in space.

Thorium is corrosive, which is a bad thing for nuclear power plants. But yeah, it's otherwise just as safe. It's also harder to get them to work. Uranium might be heavy, but you don't need much of it. . Besides, it's perfectly possible to design a reactor that doesn't need to replace it's fuel rods that often, allowing replacement when in orbit. (Hence, no problems with radiation). And thanks to their mass production of neutrons, fusion actually produces more danger during operation than fission. Luckily, neutrons are stopped easily, but it remains to be seen how much they irradiate their coolant.

Those fusion-fission hybrids are more similar to waste incinerators then reactors. They don't actually produce energy, for one.

[kahn1234]

Solar flares tend to knock everything out. And well, when your ship has space for two reactors, it's massively oversized anyway. Especially since Fusion gets more efficient the larger it gets, and hence constructing installations smaller than 2000 MW is generally not cost effective. Hence why fusion isn't really a compactable technology. Barring inventions to cold fusion or advanced plasma containment. ((Gravity could help here)) Problem is that the smaller it gets, the higher the chance for a violent runaway reaction. (Ie, nihil for any normal reactor, but a foothballsized device would either be horribly inefficient, or dangerous.)

Also, remember, whether in real life of fiction, we dont really know if these problems will actually be problems in the future. In maybe 100-200 years, we'll probably have advanced nano-tech, fusion (Macro, micro and maybe even nano-scale fusion) and a whole host of other technology.

I prefer to keep it out of the magic territory.

As for heat dissipation, it all depends on what type of fusion you use. Laser? Magnetic? Polywell? There is hot, medium and cold fusion on the table, plus the just as powerful breeder (self sustained) versions.

All types of fusion involve, at some points, hypercooled magnets, superheated plasma or other waste heat producing installations. Also doesn't take away the fact that standard fusion and fission reactors are thermal reactors, relying on steam to create power.

As for Thorium fission reactors, they are just as safe as uranium and plutonium reactors. The only reason they never caught on after their successful invention in the 1950's is because you cant easily make weapons grade material out of the byproducts. But even is fission is very safe (and i agree it is far safe than the media would have you believe), the fuel and byproducts are heavy and highly radioactive (more-so than anything involved in fusion), both negative qualities, especially in space.

Thorium is corrosive, which is a bad thing for nuclear power plants. But yeah, it's otherwise just as safe. It's also harder to get them to work. Uranium might be heavy, but you don't need much of it. . Besides, it's perfectly possible to design a reactor that doesn't need to replace it's fuel rods that often, allowing replacement when in orbit. (Hence, no problems with radiation). And thanks to their mass production of neutrons, fusion actually produces more danger during operation than fission. Luckily, neutrons are stopped easily, but it remains to be seen how much they irradiate their coolant.

Those fusion-fission hybrids are more similar to waste incinerators then reactors. They don't actually produce energy, for one.

What they are designing at the moment as fusion-fission reactors are pretty much for getting rid of or re-using nuclear waste. but they could easily be used to produce energy. Hell, they already have fuel by the truckload. and if they have fuel and can run, they can produce energy.

As for micro-scaling fusion, again, we dont know what materials or technologies will be available in the future (nano-materials could help here fantastically well, as well as other synth-materials) to enable micro and maybe nano-scale fusion.

Also, even if a thorium reactor is slightly more difficult to get working and may be corrosive (and these problems can be eliminated by designing new types of reactors and with the advent of new corrosion-resistant materials (like nano-materials)), i'd take thorium over uranium and plutonium.

[Ross Vernal]

[OOC: So how is the game going? And Ross (Fun fact, I can't help but think of you as looking like the guy from criminal minds  ) are you going to make a 'Beta Party' like in the adventurer game or like a HQ we can dick around in or what?]

[I am not. There's only so much I can do at one time, and I am just about at my limit now.

The update for this is coming after I do the Adventuring Party rounds of combat.]

[10ebbor10]

They can't. Rewiring them for fuel production involves reducing the neutron escape from the fusion (and drop the fission stage), or just cut out the massive power draw from the fission and uses more enriched fuel (or a particle arcelerator)

The very principles of fusion disallows this without turning it into a very powerfull bomb. Fusion energy production Is function of the temperature, pressure and length. Length is based on how large the reactor is mostly. So if you make it smaller, you need to increase pressure and temperature. By principle, it becomes a bomb.

And yeah, I like thorium, but it's perfectly possible to design a nuclear reactor with the same safety. Using pellets for example. (When overheating, the surrounding material expands and stops the reaction.)

[kahn1234]

They can't. Rewiring them for fuel production involves reducing the neutron escape from the fusion (and drop the fission stage), or just cut out the massive power draw from the fission and uses more enriched fuel (or a particle arcelerator)

The very principles of fusion disallows this without turning it into a very powerfull bomb. Fusion energy production Is function of the temperature, pressure and length. Length is based on how large the reactor is mostly. So if you make it smaller, you need to increase pressure and temperature. By principle, it becomes a bomb.

And yeah, I like thorium, but it's perfectly possible to design a nuclear reactor with the same safety. Using pellets for example. (When overheating, the surrounding material expands and stops the reaction.)

Current Hybrid reactors do produce energy. At least, many of the articles I've read have quoted the engineers and scientists stating that the hybrid reactors could turn nuclear waste into power. I'm going to have to do some more reading on it, although there are many different hybrid designs, and i wouldn't be surprised if at least one design can produce energy.

As for Thorium, the biggest pro for it is that there is far more of it than uranium and plutonium put together, and another is that it cannot be easily made into a weapon.

[10ebbor10]

Problem is, several more traditional reactor designs can do that too, and at a far high efficiency. They do require some preprocessing, which can be hazardous, but it works.

[Rolepgeek]

Lastly, a chaingun is not a machine gun. they dont have a high rate of fire (and in fact 800RPM is pretty fast, considering the general average size of the bullets). A chaingun usually fires bullets in excess of 20mm and are mainly used as armaments on warships, attack choppers (like the Apache), armoured vehicles (like the Bradley and the Warrior) etc.

I take issue with this. The Vulcan is the high-caliber chain gun. The Malefactor is smaller caliber, and ought to have at least a 1500 RPM rate of fire.

Also, a note; you really fucking think they're going to be using steam to power space ships, regardless of how it's heated? No. They're going to have hyper-efficient thermovoltaic processes that use the waste heat and the heat caused by the reaction to produce the energy.

Also, remember whenever you talk about efficiency, or dangers, or miniaturization. We're several hundred years in the future. How much miniaturization has occurred in the past 60 years? And since technology tends to accelerate exponentially...

Yeah. That energy pack the good doctor has is probably a fusion reactor. Because a field that makes you invisible, and a hammer that looks at the equation for gravity and says 'lolnope' probably take shittons of energy.

Speaking of which, I wonder what type of batteries are used. Supercapacitors or flywheels?

[Ross Vernal]

[It is indeed several centuries in the future.

By the way, not all of those things are Human origin. Over the past half-century or so, humans are adopting and innovating on Galactic Standard. Given enough time and exposure, they could eventually be a mid-high tier trace as opposed to low men on the totem pole.  They haven't yet figured out how to adopt GalStandard ship designs to humans, and still hitch rides with the huge ships for long rides.

EDIT: As far as chaingun power goes, think "In like a quarter, out like a dinner plate."]

[kahn1234]

Lastly, a chaingun is not a machine gun. they dont have a high rate of fire (and in fact 800RPM is pretty fast, considering the general average size of the bullets). A chaingun usually fires bullets in excess of 20mm and are mainly used as armaments on warships, attack choppers (like the Apache), armoured vehicles (like the Bradley and the Warrior) etc.

I take issue with this. The Vulcan is the high-caliber chain gun. The Malefactor is smaller caliber, and ought to have at least a 1500 RPM rate of fire.

Also, a note; you really fucking think they're going to be using steam to power space ships, regardless of how it's heated? No. They're going to have hyper-efficient thermovoltaic processes that use the waste heat and the heat caused by the reaction to produce the energy.

Also, remember whenever you talk about efficiency, or dangers, or miniaturization. We're several hundred years in the future. How much miniaturization has occurred in the past 60 years? And since technology tends to accelerate exponentially...

Yeah. That energy pack the good doctor has is probably a fusion reactor. Because a field that makes you invisible, and a hammer that looks at the equation for gravity and says 'lolnope' probably take shittons of energy.

Speaking of which, I wonder what type of batteries are used. Supercapacitors or flywheels?

That is a good point. That sort of makes the 'heat' part of the argument redundant, as any heat would be used for power. Which means Fusion would in fact be a far better power source.

And yeah, miniaturisation. We've gone in less than 40 years from computers the size of a small school gym to a size barely visible to the naked eye. It is not impossible to think that a relatively stable power source would be miniaturised through the use of advanced materials and technology.

[Rolepgeek]

I'm starting my own Sci-Fi game, is it okay if I use your attributes and traits system(not corporate, but still similar) Ross?

[Alexandria]

(( Calling dibs on a spot in your game before it's up. If that's ok. ))

[Rolepgeek]

[Sure. It's about space ships.]