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Post by teeth on Oct 23, 2016 9:41:55 GMT
According to wikipedia, a single gram of Polonium-210 emits 140 watts of energy. There might be some designs out there efficient enough to get 100 watts of electricity out of that, especially when we're dealing with such low amounts of heat. If not, then 2 grams will definitely do the trick. Currently we need at least 100 watts on anything with a gun because the loader can't be reduced beyond that, so this limit would work perfectly. This would balance RTGs versus reactors for cheap drones, currently the cheapest 100 watt reactor is something like 350 credits, whereas the cheapest 100 watt RTG I've been able to make was 3 kc but a bit lighter.
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Post by beta on Oct 23, 2016 10:08:37 GMT
Problem with that is Po-210 has a half life of 138 days. The "standard" for our stuff is 6 months operational. So, that 1 gram RTG fuel is outputting 70Wt at the 3/4 mark of your trip to where ever you are going.
The other big issue is in reality, thermocouples (especially as used in RTGs) have abysmal efficiencies - usually between 3 - 7%, nothing better than 10% has been made. After a brief search I couldn't see any mention of the common tungsten-tantalum thermocouple used in most of the reactors/RTGs here ...
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Post by RA2lover on Oct 23, 2016 15:36:33 GMT
Tungsten-Tantalum would be pretty bad for the low temperature deltas Po-210's melting point requires.
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Post by teeth on Oct 23, 2016 18:50:41 GMT
Maybe 5 or 10 grams, as long as it's still lighter and cheaper than microreactors the specifics don't matter.
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