Alternate nuclear reactor types?

[RoflTank]

I have a 10GW "Turbolaser" I use as a capital cracking spinal mount on my super-dreadnoughts, and ohhhhhh boy is it a beast.

Problem is, best I can get out of my reactors is about 375MW. And the outlet temp has to be a meager 1100K or so, because any higher and the damn fuel just melts. Well turns out that's not a problem if your fuel is SUPPOSED to be molten, like in an LFR. Throw some of that 97% enriched neptunium in a lead-bismuth eutetic coolant solution and you've got a fast neutron reactor that could easily run with an outlet temp of 2000K.

Not to mention the other slew of Gen IV reactor designs that are out there, all of which could have their uses in CoaDE. So are we ever going to see more than one reactor type? Or are there already plans in the works for new reactors?

[brad]

What? I use 2500k outlet temp on my 1 GW reactor with just U-233 dioxide fuel. Make sure to use sodium as coolant if you aren't already. Anyways, there's already some amount of work done on turboelectric reactors. I suspect there's a prototype of them in the dev build because qswitched has defined a lot of their parameters in limits.txt and that one file that contains all the possible module errors.

[RoflTank]

Originally posted by CzigBot:

What? I use 2500k outlet temp on my 1 GW reactor with just U-233 dioxide fuel. Make sure to use sodium as coolant if you aren't already. Anyways, there's already some amount of work done on turboelectric reactors. I suspect there's a prototype of them in the dev build because qswitched has defined a lot of their parameters in limits.txt and that one file that contains all the possible module errors.

What're your P and N materials for the thermocouple?

Also, neat, good to hear we might get new reactor types.

[brad]

Osmium and tungsten for my thermocouples.

[SievertChaser]

Originally posted by RoflTank:

Problem is, best I can get out of my reactors is about 375MW. And the outlet temp has to be a meager 1100K or so, because any higher and the damn fuel just melts. Well turns out that's not a problem if your fuel is SUPPOSED to be molten, like in an LFR. Throw some of that 97% enriched neptunium in a lead-bismuth eutetic coolant solution and you've got a fast neutron reactor that could easily run with an outlet temp of 2000K.

You can always program in a "black box" reactor to your liking. If you feel it's too much like cheating, try to crib the data for the Energomash EU-610 3.3 GW gas-core reactor from here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/151286-rd-600-soviet-gas-core-bimodal-nuclear-thermal-rocket/

[RoflTank]

Originally posted by dennis.danilov:

You can always program in a "black box" reactor to your liking. If you feel it's too much like cheating, try to crib the data for the Energomash EU-610 3.3 GW gas-core reactor from here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/151286-rd-600-soviet-gas-core-bimodal-nuclear-thermal-rocket/

Oh I figured out how to make much better reactors than that. I have a 6.67GW reactor with a 2500K outlet temp, as well as a few other reactors scaled down for size restricted vessels.

[SievertChaser]

Originally posted by RoflTank:

Originally posted by dennis.danilov:

You can always program in a "black box" reactor to your liking. If you feel it's too much like cheating, try to crib the data for the Energomash EU-610 3.3 GW gas-core reactor from here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/151286-rd-600-soviet-gas-core-bimodal-nuclear-thermal-rocket/

Oh I figured out how to make much better reactors than that. I have a 6.67GW reactor with a 2500K outlet temp, as well as a few other reactors scaled down for size restricted vessels.

Yeah, but the magnetohydrodynamic coil converter should beat whatever thermocouple you've come up with that can survive such temperature.

Of course, if we had MHD coils, we would just add them to our thrusters.

[RoflTank]

Originally posted by dennis.danilov:

Yeah, but the magnetohydrodynamic coil converter should beat whatever thermocouple you've come up with that can survive such temperature.

Of course, if we had MHD coils, we would just add them to our thrusters.

What kind of efficiency would you see? And also, would we even have radiators that could survive outlet temps like that?

[SievertChaser]

Originally posted by RoflTank:

Originally posted by dennis.danilov:

Yeah, but the magnetohydrodynamic coil converter should beat whatever thermocouple you've come up with that can survive such temperature.

Of course, if we had MHD coils, we would just add them to our thrusters.

What kind of efficiency would you see? And also, would we even have radiators that could survive outlet temps like that?

Up to 60%. The primary effort seems to have been to reduce the mass-output ratio, to about 18.7 g/kW.

I don't think the outlet temperature would work in a similar manner to our solid-core reactors. You don't need to worry about the thermal gradient across the thermocouple, so you just need to cycle the coolant to keep it cold enough. The internal pressure vessel was to be built from things like hafnium and niobium; the later designs didn't even use a uranium condenser, just a gas wall similar to the one in a rocket engine, so temperatures can end up pretty reasonable.