Questions tagged [nuclear-power]
Questions about generation of heat and power by nuclear phenomena, usually but not limited to radioactive decay (fission reactions). For weapons relying on nuclear phenomena, consider [weapons] and [weapon-mass-destruction] instead.
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Can Average Joe reboot the nuclear power plant?
Setup: The year is 2018. Malicious virus escaped secret lab and managed to kill 99% of all humans between January and April 2016. Not-so-average Joe spent his last two years of basic survival with the ...
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How can I build a Nuclear Reactor in my backyard? [closed]
In my world, having a nuclear reactor at your own house is legal, in fact government donates money in the form of subsidies ( So no constraints of funds). This might have been practical because of ...
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Will unattended nuclear power plants actually cause damage to their surroundings?
Scenario: Deadly virus wiped out 80 - 90% world population and it did it pretty quickly (in 2 months)
Although it is plausible that among these 10 - 20% of survivors will be people who actually know ...
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What would cause a nuclear power plant to break down after 2000 years, but not sooner?
What would cause a nuclear power plant to break down after 2000 years, but not sooner?
The setting is a society in a dark age. Their ancestors were considerably more advanced than earth currently is....
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Extremely compact nuclear reactor?
Realistically, how small can a nuclear reactor get (fission or fusion)?
Truck sized? Table top? Mr. Fusion? AAA Battery?
Are there other physical limits when we include human safety issues?
Let'...
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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 ...
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Uranium block house heating
I'm thinking of building a very long term heating system for a housing complex.
I want it not to rely on sunlight, wind or other fuels.
And I just need the heat.
The surroundings are pretty cold, so ...
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Practicality of a thorium-powered, superheated-steam car?
At the beginning of the 1900s, the Doble Steam Motors Company built steam cars. Their engineers solved many of the problems steam cars had until then by using superheated steam and a condenser to ...
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Would a civilization on a planet with no natural Uranium-235 NEED to first achieve fusion before it can build nukes?
If a much older solar system - say 10 billion years with a slow burning star - would sprout intelligent life at around that age, given the half-life of U-235 and natural Uranium reserves, according to ...
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Why would Fission be used in a world where Fusion reactors exist?
In my world, all terrestrial bodies in the solar-system of over 900 km size have a significant human presence. Earth-moon Travel is as common as an interstate road trip, and Interplanetary travel is ...
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Could a steam-age civilization trial-and-error their way to a nuclear reactor if they had access to enough fissile material?
I think this boils down to a question of how much fundamental understanding is needed to build a very basic nuclear reactor to boil water.
If fissile material was readily available to an otherwise ...
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Is it possible for an organism to evolve to generate its own nuclear power?
Is it possible for an organism to evolve to biologically generate its own nuclear power? If so, how would this evolution occur?
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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 ...
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Train-World: Feasibility of radioisotope steam-electric engines
...It's paradox. They left us these technological marvels, yet with all their might and knowledge they failed to prevent their own doom...
Excerpt from a lecture by the High Historian of Berlin Falls
...
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What would it take to make thorium a prominent energy source?
Thorium power plants were a thing that was researched and ultimately abandoned; however, for all intents and purposes, it's safer than any power source we have today.
In our timeline, the first such ...
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Train-World: Storing RHUs for decades to centuries
...no, I mean, supposedly, I believe there is more about it than mere kans on our part. Installations like this one are found all along the spoorwegs, and yes, around some you should tread lightly. ...
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What sort of nuclear-based transportation would be best suited to cheaply transporting large amount of cargo if radiation weren't a concern?
In this scenario people are in a constant war on an infinite flat world with the geography of Antarctica's interior (but with no liquid water or hydrocarbons). Notably this world has an abundance of ...
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What would it take to make a modern(ish) nuclear reactor release fallout?
I'm trying (failing) to write a story set within the exclusion zone around a nuclear power plant incident set in the near future. The 'incident' that leads to the exclusion zone being set up isn't the ...
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How might nuclear power have never been developed?
I've been thinking about a world in which nuclear power and nuclear weapons were never developed. What kind of mechanism would allow this to be possible?
Nuclear weapons seem the easiest option, with ...
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How to design a zero-g nuclear reactor?
My worldbuilding involves a reasonably near-future, high-realism space station research outpost, and I'd like it to be powered by a nuclear reactor. However, I need as much detail on the actual ...
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Is helium 3 lucrative enough to justify the mining of the moon?
I've been trying to come up with a scenario in which space stations and lunar bases are established but are considered controversial. I sort of figure that if corporations started mining the moon that ...
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What would happen if all 433 nuclear reactors had meltdowns? [closed]
NOTE: This was adapted from another question that I asked recently.
Apparently, a 30km radius around Chernobyl will not be safe for humans for another 20,000 years. The more recent 2011 Fukushima ...
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Convert radioactivity directly into electricity: Possible or not?
Is it possible to directly convert radioactivity to turn it into electricity?
If yes, then what is the conversion rate?
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Nuclear power for nomads
Is it possible to create a scenario where nuclear power is a practical option for nomads living like in Mongolia?
There's two possible applications of nuclear power. One is to just use it as a heat ...
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Feasability of miniature nuclear reactors for humanoid cyborgs
The idea is to build a cybernetic body for a human. Only the brain and a few glands related to emotions, like adrenal glands, will be kept. The brain and the glands will be in a closed, plug-and-play,...
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Would there be any place for nuclear-powered spaceships in a world where antimatter propulsion is the standard?
Nuclear fission rockets are becoming obsolete and have been superseded by the more efficient antimatter engines, which have nearly 100% efficiency and do not produce pollutants.
I'm wondering this: in ...
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Why would NSWR's be used when Orion drives are around?
In the setting I'm making, Orion drives are one of the primary forms of propulsion used in spacecraft. I have been thinking of adding Nuclear Salt Water Rockets (the lithium variety) alongside Orion ...
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If people were the size of squirrels, would we ever have developed nuclear fission?
If people were about 1 foot tall and weighed about 1 pound, would we ever have made a reactor or an atomic bomb? Because critical mass doesn't change, the scale of the project to mine and process ...
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The Frozen Star - Can U-238 reactors be used as a energy source for 10,000 years?
I was watching this Minecraft Animation video based on a scientific concept about what would happen if we froze the Sun - What happens if we Freeze The Sun- Portrayed by Minecraft.
In this video, ...
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Usability of fusion scoops in deep space?
How effective would it be to use fusion scoops as an actually effective method of interstellar travel? How quickly could you generate thrust? How much fuel would such a thing need, and would it work ...
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How much of the earth would be in an exclusion zone if all 450+ nuclear reactors failed simultaneously?
I'm about to flood the planet with magic, which doesn't play nice with tech, especially power. The only places tech will still work are Null Zones which cancel magic due to deposits of minerals (the ...
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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, ...
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Running a nuclear power plant in the post-apocalypse: is it possible?
So, the apocalypse has occurred, and for about 150 years humanity spent its time wallowing in misery, sorrow, and so on.
So moving on, in the northwest of Nevada there’s an abandoned nuclear reactor, ...
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World governments shutting down their nuclear power plants after Chernobyl?
What if in an alternate universe after the Chernobyl incident, the world governments decide to shut down their nuclear power plants and if so how would that affect society?
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When and how would Earth's history diverge if uranium/plutonium weren't present?
Let's imagine an Earth clone devoid of naturally occurring fissile materials—and, for comprehensiveness' sake, also devoid of fertile materials like thorium and americium that could be used to produce ...
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Unforeseen Consequences of Limiting Nuclear Fission
From my understanding nuclear fission takes place in two different scenarios and correlates with the speed of a neutron. In terms of material, we have fissionable material which undergo nuclear ...
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How self-sufficient a fast breeder nuclear power plant can be in a post-apocalyptic setting?
Setting
The full society collapse is starting, and a group of people know it. It may or may not lead to a total extinction event. They can't protect a whole city but a couple of hectares is doable. ...
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an artificial fission star
A K2+ civilization wants to build a fission star, a huge mass of fissile material which doesn't collapse due to the radiation emitted by its fission decay. I know there are reactors like the aqueous ...
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How can nuclear power produce -electricity- in space when energy must be converted differently?
Hear me out before you downvote; It's not as simple as it seems.
On Earth, nuclear reactions produce heat energy. This is used to heat water, creating steam, powering turbines connected to generators ...
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How hard would it be for a nuclear ramjet drone fighter to be shot down with modern antiaircraft (AA) systems?
TLDR: ~ mach 3, practically unlimited range but presumably substandard stealth characteristics. Would it be a game breaking weapon on modern air battlefield or merely would require tactics adjustment ...
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Containing the radiation of a nuclear powered aeroplane
Let us assume that in the next 50 years one of the large nation-states of our world will build nuclear powered planes, for intercontinental flight. Supposedly, the nuclear planes would be bigger, ...
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What type of safety features would a commercial nuclear jet aircraft have?
Let's say that you have a commercially/privately-operated jet aircraft. It's not something that's going to be used by a single pilot, or someone making mail runs, or a bush pilot; it's more of the ...
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Nuclear terrorism 4 billion years ago: Was natural uranium enriched enough to create weapons without need for further enrichment?
Natural uranium (NU) is a mixture of about 0.7% $\ ^{235}U$ (fissile) and 99.3% $\ ^{238}U$ (non-fissile). To create uranium-based nuclear weapons NU has to undergo a process called enrichment in ...
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How could a brown dwarf be used for energy?
I've been thinking about a civilization on a planet orbiting around a brown dwarf drifting in interstellar space. Obviously, by definition, a brown dwarf is too small to have much fusion on its own. I'...
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What political/historical factors could create acceptance of peaceful nuclear explosions?
I have been poking at the idea of an eventual re-emergence of the PACER concept, where energy is obtained by detonating nuclear explosions... but not exactly in the same form. After humans become ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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How would a pure fusion bomb change modern warfare
Currently most Nukes are actually thermonuclear fusion bombs ignited by a fission (uranium or plutoniom) bomb.
The fission bomb is like a lighting match that s needed to trigger the more powerful ...
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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 ...
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With modern-day/near-future (i.e. potentially realizable within 20 years) technology, can a nuclear reactor with these characteristics be built?
I'm writing about a nuclear-powered tank. Yes, I know about what the problems associated with it are. No, the people in the setting don't care about radioactive contamination of their environment, or ...
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