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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 17, 2016 19:53:41 GMT
Ok so in real life lithium deuteride is the preferred nuclear fusion fuel as it is a solid not a gas. But currently in game I have yet to make any sort of nuclear weapon that can get fusion to start with Lithium Deuteride. Is this a bug or am I missing something?
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hal
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Post by hal on Oct 17, 2016 20:32:16 GMT
Ok so in real life lithium deuteride is the preferred nuclear fusion fuel as it is a solid not a gas. But currently in game I have yet to make any sort of nuclear weapon that can get fusion to start with Lithium Deuteride. Is this a bug or am I missing something? As I understand it lithium deuteride is used in staged (teller-ulam) thermonuclear devices where the x-rays of a fission device are used to compress it to where it is capable of fusion. This does not seem to be currently possible in the game. With only conventional explosives the compression needed cannot be attained. |
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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 17, 2016 20:37:00 GMT
Ok so in real life lithium deuteride is the preferred nuclear fusion fuel as it is a solid not a gas. But currently in game I have yet to make any sort of nuclear weapon that can get fusion to start with Lithium Deuteride. Is this a bug or am I missing something? As I understand it lithium deuteride is used in staged (teller-ulam) thermonuclear devices where the x-rays of a fission device are used to compress it to where it is capable of fusion. This does not seem to be currently possible in the game. With only conventional explosives the compression needed cannot be attained. Hmm well in that case if we can't ever get it to go through fusion without teller ulam nukes then why do we have it? |
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hal
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Post by hal on Oct 17, 2016 20:46:42 GMT
As I understand it lithium deuteride is used in staged (teller-ulam) thermonuclear devices where the x-rays of a fission device are used to compress it to where it is capable of fusion. This does not seem to be currently possible in the game. With only conventional explosives the compression needed cannot be attained. Hmm well in that case if we can't ever get it to go through fusion without teller ulam nukes then why do we have it? Not sure. I was actually not entirely correct: lithium deuteride undergoes some fusion if it is used in an 'alarm clock'/'sloika' type device where the core is composed of thin alternating layers of lithium deuteride and plutonium. This however is not very efficient and still cannot be made in-game as cores cannot made in such a way in the module editor. |
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Post by goduranus on Oct 18, 2016 3:59:03 GMT
How come the game doesn't have actual fusion nukes?
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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 18, 2016 4:10:00 GMT
How come the game doesn't have actual fusion nukes? Ah I believe it is rather simple. Teller Ulam nukes are VERY complex and all of the equations governing them are classified. As such there would be no way to implement them in game as anything other than black boxes simple due to the secret nature of how they work and that would be quite limited. As it stands there is a fair bit of guess work to even get the nukes we have in game working  |
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hal
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Post by hal on Oct 18, 2016 4:36:08 GMT
How come the game doesn't have actual fusion nukes? Ah I believe it is rather simple. Teller Ulam nukes are VERY complex and all of the equations governing them are classified. As such there would be no way to implement them in game as anything other than black boxes simple due to the secret nature of how they work and that would be quite limited. As it stands there is a fair bit of guess work to even get the nukes we have in game working This is unfortunately true. Back in 1979 there was a big case against a magazine for simply covering the overall mechanics of Teller-Ulam type devices and including an illustration. I have hope that the module can be improved upon for a more in-depth usage of fission and boosted fission weapons without encountering the same problems, however. It'd be interesting to have more options to tinker with  |
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Post by morrigi on Oct 19, 2016 6:43:16 GMT
Apparently, it's restricted information even if the information in question is created (not copied) by a person who is not affiliated with the government in any way. Accurate public speculation of the Teller-Ulam design results in the Feds completely losing their shit.
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Post by dragonkid11 on Oct 19, 2016 7:32:01 GMT
Ah...so that's why there's no pure fusion bomb.
I actually thought that boosted fission bomb is a type of fusion bomb in the game!
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Post by beta on Oct 19, 2016 20:04:40 GMT
Some major governments of the world would be very interested if you had the designs for a pure fusion bomb ...
Modern thermonuclear bombs still require fission. A boosted fission bomb is different from a thermonuclear bomb in how much of the bomb's energy is created from the fusion fuel itself.
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Post by n2maniac on Oct 20, 2016 5:42:03 GMT
Also, is it just me or does the pressure limits with lithium deuteride appear like it is a gas?
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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 20, 2016 14:21:47 GMT
Also, is it just me or does the pressure limits with lithium deuteride appear like it is a gas? Yeah that is something else that bothers me about it. I mean we shouldn't even be selecting a density of the stuff as it is a solid. We should be selecting the mass we want and it should put exactly 0 pressure on the surrounding material because it is a solid. So it should be a really great fusion booster but it just doesn't work and likes to pretend it is a gas which is really confusing and detrimental to its use. Not to mention the fact that I have yet to get it to undergo fusion. |
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Post by ross128 on Oct 20, 2016 15:13:29 GMT
Honestly, in general I've been having a hard time to get anything other than D-T to satisfy the lawson criterion.
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hal
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Post by hal on Oct 20, 2016 15:18:15 GMT
Also, is it just me or does the pressure limits with lithium deuteride appear like it is a gas? Yeah that is something else that bothers me about it. I mean we shouldn't even be selecting a density of the stuff as it is a solid. We should be selecting the mass we want and it should put exactly 0 pressure on the surrounding material because it is a solid. So it should be a really great fusion booster but it just doesn't work and likes to pretend it is a gas which is really confusing and detrimental to its use. Not to mention the fact that I have yet to get it to undergo fusion. Yes, lithium deuteride should be a solid, but I don't think it makes for a particularly good fission booster IRL (though it may work in the game). Modern boosted fission bombs use tritium-deuteride mixtures which are injected into the core. While lithium deuteride has been successfully used as a fission booster (the 'sloika' design tested by the soviets) the lithium deuteride was placed between the fissile core and the tamper (other designs [Teller's 'Alarm Clock'], never tested, along the same lines used thin layers of lithium deuteride in between layers of plutonium), not in a hollow pit in the fissile material. The module editor currently only allows lithium deuteride in a hollow pit in the core - even if it was corrected to a solid, I don't think it would work properly, though it would be interesting to find out if it does in-game. Note that even if it does, the course of real-world nuclear weapon development suggests that using lithium deuteride in this way is at the very least cost-inefficient compared to tritium-deuteride mixtures. Honestly, in general I've been having a hard time to get anything other than D-T to satisfy the lawson criterion. I think that's how it is in real-world applications as well. Lithium deuteride I believe only works because tritium is produced by the lithium so that T-D fusion can occur. After a bit of googling I found an article (book chapter?) on fusion reactions in general which looks like it might be useful. I've only skimmed it very briefly, but figures 11.3 and 11.5 seem to illustrate the gap between the energy needed to get T-D to undergo fusion versus other potential fusion fuels/reactions. |
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