Thursday, December 19, 2019

The flying nuclear submarine?

Continuing to our turbine: I grant that solar isn’t negligible up here. It’s just that our perma-plane, if not a ramjet but we're skipping fuel anyway, really REALLY wants an additional power source. This post investigates nuclear - directly, or by cable.

A Cassini-type MMRTG delivers 110 W for each 5 kg of PuO2. My 250 m3 cylinder with its GE90 turbine would need 5518 kg of this to make up the difference. So, probably not that…

A better plan is a 2008-era submarine-type nuclear reactor. This adds 1000 tons of reactor and (if water) coolant, among other “machinery”; that is, 900 metric tonnes. This much we might skim down without Unobtainium given it's cooler, although the low ambient pressure might act as a thermos. It will, luckily, fit in the 2000 tonnes our permaplane allows.

I am less sure about volume. Also I'm assuming (for now) it is inefficient. And we have alternatives.

To conclude: we can use nuclear to keep 'planes in the sky, but we won't. I'll entertain nuclear for a floater. Nuclear does give us at least 13000 kW as a baseline.

No comments:

Post a Comment