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11-11-2018, 08:17 AM | #1 |
Join Date: Aug 2015
Location: Kenai, Alaska
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DIY Nuclear Reactors After the End
In This thread we discuss possible means of generating power after the end via nuclear energy, as well as how it would look, and the feasibility/resource requirements of such an endeavor.
I'm only a layman on the topic myself, but I seem to recall something about thorium molten salt reactors being feasible with TL6 technology. |
11-11-2018, 08:53 AM | #2 |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: DIY Nuclear Reactors After the End
What kind of size of communities and economies are you envisaging in your AtE setting?
There is a significant technical gap, in that only two, small, molten salt reactors have ever been operated, and the last one was shut down in the early 1970s. Neither of them used thorium. While the physics and the theoretical engineering look sound, a significant engineering and development programme would be required in today's world to make thorium molten salt reactors into a practical technology. Even if that had been done Before the End, making thorium fluoride for fuel requires industrial-scale fluorine production, which is one of the more tricky and dangerous chemical industry processes. You also need a supply of enriched uranium or plutonium to start your thorium-based fuel cycle, because it works by running a nuclear reactor on one of those fuels to supply neutrons to transform thorium-232 into uranium-233. The most plausible way to have nuclear power AtE is to have a nuclear plant that was shutdown and mothballed before the catastrophe, plus a surviving cadre of operators, and a surviving supply of ready-fabricated fuel within transportation distance.
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11-11-2018, 09:26 AM | #3 | |
Join Date: Aug 2015
Location: Kenai, Alaska
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Re: DIY Nuclear Reactors After the End
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As for the scale of the settlement I'm not sure on exact numbers, but obviously it's large enough that scavenging solar panels and burning phonebooks for warmth isn't cutting it. |
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11-11-2018, 09:38 AM | #4 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: DIY Nuclear Reactors After the End
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Edit: If you want a settlement to have locally produced electric power, I really recommend either hydroelectric, or (wood or coal fired) steam engines, both of which are scalable all the way down to projects individual hobbyists or off-grid fanatics, can and do put together themselves with parts well within the reach of a small machine shop. Even getting nuclear fuel is hard - there's a reason we haven't had a terrorist movement or even small civil war deploy a nuclear or radiological attack yet.
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-- MA Lloyd Last edited by malloyd; 11-11-2018 at 09:53 AM. |
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11-11-2018, 09:58 AM | #5 |
Join Date: Aug 2015
Location: Kenai, Alaska
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Re: DIY Nuclear Reactors After the End
Well sure, we're not working within a full economy but there's still a lot of pre end TL8 tech and material around that doesn't need to be made from scratch that certainly lessens the infrastructure requirements.
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11-11-2018, 10:18 AM | #6 |
Join Date: Feb 2011
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Re: DIY Nuclear Reactors After the End
I think it kind of depends on how much you value your workers.
You might be able to get away with a big pile of mixed radioactives and having slaves keep it stacked so it stays critical. |
11-11-2018, 11:38 AM | #7 | |||
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: DIY Nuclear Reactors After the End
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Making sufficiently pure graphite that you can use unenriched uranium needs a pretty good chemical industry. So does making heavy water. You need either of these in quantities of tens of tons, which you aren't going to manage in a surviving high-school science lab. Late TL5-grade industrial plant can do it, but it's industrial plant, because the minimum quantities to make a working reactor are rather large. These materials aren't generally found lying around in adequate quantities. This is because in these quantities, they don't have any uses except making nuclear reactors, and that's quite strictly controlled on safety and bomb-making grounds. Quote:
With the wrong radioactives, it doesn't go critical. With the right ones, it melts down, and gives you a new mini-apocalypse. Making and operating a controllable nuclear reactor is harder than this.
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The Path of Cunning. Indexes: DFRPG Characters, Advantage of the Week, Disadvantage of the Week, Skill of the Week, Techniques. Last edited by johndallman; 11-11-2018 at 11:45 AM. Reason: big pile of mixed radioactives... |
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11-11-2018, 12:41 PM | #8 |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: DIY Nuclear Reactors After the End
Though you don't actually have to achieve criticality to produce usable power. A safely sub-critical reactor pile would require a lot more mass and especially a lot more fissionable material than a proper reactor of the same power, but is a much easier engineering task if you somehow have enough material for it. (Essentially a giant RTG.)
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I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
11-11-2018, 03:12 PM | #9 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: DIY Nuclear Reactors After the End
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Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." |
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11-12-2018, 03:30 AM | #10 | |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: DIY Nuclear Reactors After the End
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If you have a big, high-tech society for the wasteland (say a few million people) there are too many other ways to generate electricity which are easier: hydro, wind, biomass, coal from small deposits or the giant heaps left from the Golden Age ... a much smaller, poorer population in the Wasteland does not need nearly as much energy as we do.
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"It is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge." H. Beam Piper This forum got less aggravating when I started using the ignore feature |
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