All Questions
Tagged with nuclear-power science-based
30
questions
8
votes
3
answers
2k
views
How big should this starship's power system be?
I have a near future starship that weighs about 10,000 tons. I've determined that the ship needs a 500 megawatt fission reactor, but the problem is that even though nuclear fuel rods are obscenely ...
- 97.7k
-1
votes
1
answer
142
views
What will happen to nuclear power stations / reactors if chain reaction suddenly stops to provide energy?
What will happen to reactors if nuclear fission chain reactions in some specific areas will just stop working?
Other types of nuclear phenomena (ones with gamma rays, positrons,etc) are still in ...
- 338
4
votes
6
answers
3k
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Can You Make A Tiny Nuclear Reactor By Employing Supercritical Conditions For Brief Periods Of Time?
The idea is that you would have pieces of plutonium or U233 close enough that if left to their own devices they should go supercritical in a fraction of a second. However, in between the pieces you ...
- 2,803
3
votes
3
answers
313
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Feasibility of Tiny Nuclear Engines
In this setting nuclear material is incredibly cheap, while all hydrocarbons need to be synthesized from scratch. Additionally people have shadow magic which allows them to both easily shield against ...
- 2,803
5
votes
3
answers
255
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Could a sufficiently heavy element serve as a muon source to catalyze nuclear fusion?
I have lately been researching methods of "cold fusion", or fusion reactions which do not generate much waste heat, for use as a spacecraft power system (my propulsion system idea is ...
- 1,042
27
votes
11
answers
6k
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Nuclear Piston Engine - Is it possible?
While researching unique methods of nuclear energy generation and propulsion, I encountered many things, both in rocketry and aerospace. For instance, the nuclear thermal jet engine. However, I found ...
- 1,660
3
votes
3
answers
524
views
How effectively recover enriched uranium from nuclear impact site?
In the world(not Earth, but eath-like), I am building there was a nuclear exchange recently. Recently, I mean 25(subject to change) years into the past. I am describing a small clump of cities near ...
- 1,138
4
votes
6
answers
516
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For how much and for how long would a "Closed Cycle Nuclear Thermal Rocket Engine" generate thrust for a floating ship?
Context/TLDR:
The "Closed Cycle Nuclear Thermal Rocket Engine" is just a big nuclear steam engine that in this specific case, uses the (non radioactive) water steam to stay in air, at the ...
- 293
1
vote
2
answers
156
views
Do chemicals from nuclear reprocessing waste remain radioactive? Are they flammable?
I'm writing a story about a town whose residents all work at a nuclear reprocessing site. Some teenagers begin to hang out near a small body of water close to the site that they call "the swamp". The ...
- 29
7
votes
1
answer
313
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How long can the entire civilization be powered by converting all nuclear arsenal into commercial reactor fuel?
Imagine a miracle happened and all leaders decided to wind back the minute hand of the doomsday clock and passed a bill that can transform all kinds of nuclear weapons into fuel for power plants, ...
- 48k
15
votes
4
answers
4k
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Could I build a nuclear reactor based on Bernoulli's principle?
So I was recently inspired by the answers that I saw on this stack exchange to the following question: Feasibility of H.G. Wells' Continuously-Exploding Atomic Bombs
And it occurred to me that ...
- 447
-2
votes
1
answer
140
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What happens to hydrogen after burning [closed]
With fusion on the rise we are going to have a lot of helium but what gases are limited in helium burning?
Context: my science teacher did not know the answer and I got curious
1
vote
4
answers
756
views
What would the effects be if all power grids connected to nuclear reactors abruptly suffered catastrophic failure?
To be more specific, I mean what if every wire, every power cable and transformer on the connected grids to the nuclear power plants all ruptured at once. The transformers literally exploding, the ...
- 1,940
2
votes
2
answers
386
views
Would it be safe to assume that solid core nuclear rocket technology advances?
Solid Core Nuclear Thermal rocketry has existed for a while and I was thinking about using it as the primary propulsion in my setting. Now most Solid Core rockets still have fairly long transit times (...
- 3,937
3
votes
4
answers
574
views
Heat regulation in an asteroid base powered by a small nuclear reactor
So, I’m writing about the siege of an asteroid base. This asteroid is near the outer edge an asteroid belt at the solar radiation equivalent of Saturn’s orbit from its star (although the raw distance ...
- 176