01-14-2011, 08:30 PM
Hi,
I agree with Lissa on this point. One can say "choose a better nuclear reaction", but nature really doesn't offer one. You can say "choose better shielding materials" but even the best possible still take pretty good thicknesses to work.
The Catch-22 is that if you use low energy reactions, you don't need as much shielding but then the pile has to be much larger to get a sustained reaction. If you use high energy reactions, you can make the pile smaller, but you then need more shielding. Optimizing just for weight, you still end up with something more suitable for railroad engines than cars or trucks. And that optimization involves using some nasty materials and insufficient containment for purely mechanical accidents.
OK, here we're back to naquadah generators (i.e., science fiction). Do you have anything beyond imagination to indicate that the strong force can be re-coupled to the electro-weak in anything other than the conditions immediately after the Big Bang? I suspect that if undoing of the symmetry breaking is possible at all, the energy available will be many orders of magnitude smaller than the energy required. I suspect that that technology will be contemporary with the space warping FTL drive.
--Pete
(01-14-2011, 03:33 PM)kandrathe Wrote: I'm saying that by choosing better nuclear reactions you can minimize the amount of harmful radiation emitted, and by choosing better shielding materials you can minimize the size and mass of the shielding.
(01-14-2011, 03:42 PM)Lissa Wrote: ... the higher the energy of the incident radiation, the more shielding required. It's not simply getting better reactions or smaller masses or using different methods to gather energy from standard radioactive decay ...
I agree with Lissa on this point. One can say "choose a better nuclear reaction", but nature really doesn't offer one. You can say "choose better shielding materials" but even the best possible still take pretty good thicknesses to work.
The Catch-22 is that if you use low energy reactions, you don't need as much shielding but then the pile has to be much larger to get a sustained reaction. If you use high energy reactions, you can make the pile smaller, but you then need more shielding. Optimizing just for weight, you still end up with something more suitable for railroad engines than cars or trucks. And that optimization involves using some nasty materials and insufficient containment for purely mechanical accidents.
(01-14-2011, 03:33 PM)kandrathe Wrote: Another point I'm trying to make is that while there have been some advances in making nuclear power smaller and safer, essentially a simple critical mass nuclear reaction is still used to generate steam power. That is a fairly archaic and inefficient way to transfer the power of the strong nuclear force into motive or electrical power. Given more attention and less political antipathy, quantum chromodynamics might have progressed much further than it has. For example, allowing for the direct conversion of the strong force into the electroweak force thereby eliminating waste altogether.
OK, here we're back to naquadah generators (i.e., science fiction). Do you have anything beyond imagination to indicate that the strong force can be re-coupled to the electro-weak in anything other than the conditions immediately after the Big Bang? I suspect that if undoing of the symmetry breaking is possible at all, the energy available will be many orders of magnitude smaller than the energy required. I suspect that that technology will be contemporary with the space warping FTL drive.
--Pete
How big was the aquarium in Noah's ark?