'Safe' thermoelectric fission reactors

Somehow your company hasn't registered on the Project Prosperous...

Anyways, I'll use the name 'Jasonvance Industries' tell me if you want to change.

Awesome! Thanks! Finally the first submission ;u;

This will be linked to the thread post.

Honestly, if you guys don't mind really heavy mods, my Graphene coated fuel and control rod reactors are probably more than enough for this challenge, unless there are concerns about the melting point of the inner loop turbo-pump. And even then, it's still IIRC for the most part somewhere approaching 100+ Kelvin away from meltdown (with the exception of the 1 GW reactor I have, which I've constantly been having difficulty trying to optimize. If you guys want, I'll get some screen shots and such and share them with you guys.

That is because the temp values listed show the coolant's temp, not the reactor's temp. On my reactors that are a few mili-K away from meltdown the coolant temp leaving the reactor is only 2910 K. That means the reactor is right at 3140K and the flow rate at 2910K is enough to keep continuing to rise. But if your coolant flow off the reactor reads 2910K that does not mean your fuel rod temp is 2910K. I'm sure there is a formula with thermal conductivity of the coolant / fuel rods / flow rate and what not you could use to number crunch for this challenge though if you wanted to.

Here are two screenshots showing the fuel rods melting at 2911K vs not melting at 2910K. To make the challenge easier you could just say reach meltdown then reduce coolant temp by an extra 10 degrees I guess if you don't want to dig up formulas (I have been avoiding this challenge due to this ambiguity myself).

It is clearly being calculated by some formula, but sadly it isn't displayed to the user (as far as I know at least if someone has some trick to get the fuel rod temp to display I'm all ears). Also if there is a wild Qswitched reading it would be nice info to have for people designing reactors so we don't have to slowly inch up until we get the error then back off in fractions of steps to close in on the melting point (one of the more tedious parts of building reactors that could be solved or at least assisted with this value displayed).

This doesn't at all meet the requirements laid out in the OP but I figure anyone coming here looking for a realistic/safe reactor would be interested. It was designed with dimensions similar to the stock 13.5MW in mind, generally to be used in a pair per ship in a more realistic fleet I wanna put together.

- Criticality constant is centred on a moderate margin.
- Lead-bismuth coolant is safer than sodium due to both a much higher boiling point and density stopping more gamma radiation.
- Moderator comes pre-graphitised (diamond moderators may decompose into this at operating temps and provide insufficient mass).
- 50% enriched fuel 'cause we're the military damnit. It is reasonably short of being a bomb though; far as I know weapons-grade is >70%.
- There is actually a neutron reflector! Bask in its glory.
- Silicon nitride inner pump probably won't react too much with the coolant, I'm not certain, but it's better than using raw carbon.
- LCP outer pump is more rigid than PE and could better handle water temperature fluctuations, without being a big heavy thing made of steel or waspaloy.
- Speaking of water, that's the outer coolant. May as well do something with the dishwater while you're not using it!
- 2000K outlet won't sublimate carbon radiators in vacuum (~2200K limit).

- The only bad thing about it is the thermocouple being at stress limits, but you can just make it a bit taller if you want. (*´︶｀*)



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Comparison with stock reactor of similar design (Mo-Ta thermocouple, metal coolant, 2000K outlet):


There's also a stock version using mercury, which apparently was used as a reactor coolant in reality for the same reasons as the lead-bismuth alloy that superceded it (dense so it stops gamma radiation, metal so it doesn't interfere with neutrons). Also the outer pump is made of PE instead of LCP.

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