Nixeu
Lord of Madness, Harbinger of Llamas
- Location
- Your nightmares.
I mean...not having to handle liquid coolant and the attendent risks alone seems like a huge advantage. In-terms of actual, direct damage in a meltdown, the coolant is, by far, the biggest contributor in pretty much every modern variation on fission. Hell, even in the case of Chernobyl, the general consensus is that the explosions were steam and hydrogen explosions, not the sort of criticality you see in nuclear weapons (though a recent paper indicates there may be evidence that the initial, smaller blast could have been such a criticality, it's validity is up for debate, mostly due to it not explaining exactly how they managed to create one).
See, most reactors use water as coolant, and, under the conditions of meltdown, the water can end up producing hydrogen in massive amounts, more than the small amounts formed during normal operation (this is through two different processes, for complex reasons I won't get into). And the more exotic coolants, like sodium, sodium-potassium alloy, or metal-fluorine salts, can be even worse in such conditions. Even molten lead coolant, which has several safety advantages, isn't exactly the safest thing to have around.
Additionally, the entire liquid coolant system is a point of vulnerability in a reactor. It's difficult to totally seal the fuel off in a reaction vessel, because you need a way to get heat energy out of the core. That can be a problem, especially if damaged. Going "wireless", as it were, makes it much more possible to create a secure, armored shell around the fuel.
And, if we're using the field just for cooling a reactor/piece of nuclear fuel, we could use as many as we wanted. We can apparently shape the fields to only cover specific volumes of space. If all your heat comes from the reactor, there's no need to be concerned about that.
Because water has electrons in it. It's significantly denser than air. Unless we can clear out all the water between the target and the sub before it fires, all it will do is destroy the electrons keeping the water together. Which wouldn't be an issue, except that it would greatly decrease the range. You'd be losing power with every particle annihilation. And, of course, massively irradiated the surrounding in the process. I'm not even going to begin to speculate on what the release of free oxygen and hydrogen ions could do, either.
Not...quite. It'd be replacing a system in current reactors.
Oh, it's a neat thought, to be sure. I can see ways to pull it off, now that it's not so late at night. Build it like a gun, put the heat output in the bullet chamber, superheat the bullet, then fire. Seems like a decently workable solution.
It's less wasteful than it seems. Heat sinks are usually just big pieces of a metal with good heat-conducting properties, with high surface area to maximize transfer to the surrounding air. Copper and steel can both work for this, though rarer metals like silver and platinum shed heat faster.
I thought we wanted a completed castle to siege? Eh, whatever. I still think the fact that the OMINOUS sound-effect is coming off Bristlethorn in greater amounts as time goes on is a bad sign. I'd like to beat him before he goes full-Jojo villain and starts posing. Or, worse, gets a Stand.
It'd work fine for Jaeger reactors, but the results of the cooling system being damaged...would actually probably still be better than the current results of that being damaged, honestly. But they wouldn't be good.
Thermoelectric would indeed be good for smaller applications, since having to boil water to turn turbines isn't that good for that sort of thing. Water is heavy. And we could probably do some research to increase the energy efficiency. Really, this does solve some of the issue with thermoelectric power, since it requires a high temperature differential to work, and thus works less well if the thermoelectric stuff heats up too much. Hell, this thing could make and maintain such a differential all by itself, by leeching heat from the machinery, as well as the other source of heat it's tapping.
Honestly, I was assuming another cooling system, even just the air outside the gun. Just using bullets would indeed be inefficient and prone to overheating. That said, the conversion isn't actually any easier for lasers. You'd need either a steam turbine or thermoelectric conversion. Because lasers run off electricity, not heat.
Now, a freeze-gun/superheated melee weapon combo, on the other hand...that has some serious potential. The wide surface area of a sword or axe blade would make for an excellent heat-sink. Much better than a bullet, though possibly worse than turning it into electrical energy. That sort of sudden burst of extra electricity could be used for a lot of things, not just lasers, and evaporating water eats a lot of energy, especially if you can keep voids or bubbles from forming at the interface and insulating the non-boiled water.
