UNLIMITED POWER (Reactor Thread (also radiators))

Does anybody know how to read material properties related to radiation shielding?

Particularly, I was trying to figure out if there's a material that has good radiation shielding properties that can be used for crew compartments.

However, since I was at it, I was planning on creating a list/table of these for the Standards thread.

Yeah, that's also what I do right now as well, I'm trying to figure out if that's the best really. Boron being strong is irrelevant though, at that thickness (1cm?) and either way crew compartments get destroyed very easily; I'm not looking to armor them.

I was trying to create the smallest possible crew compartment with a radiation resistant material in order to create a big array of small redundant compartments, preferably as thick and short as possible, for all of them to be unlikely to be shot. Why radiation resistant? Because creating a dozen different sized radiation shields is annoying

In any case, I am making tests and compiling a graph for the standards thread for radiation resistant materials. Lithium-6 is several orders of magnitude better than anything else.

This are the results for 1m neutron reflector (except for Lithium-6) for the stock 13.5MW reactor:


I've tried out lots of other materials, but these are the best for radiation hazard reduction.

I need to come up with two reactors to test out thermal vs fast neutron radiation, though...

I wanted to come up with a radiation reduction per m per c value for different materials though... Maybe boron carbide can be used to coat reactors at little cost.

Quick question: What's a "Standard" minimum/safe radiation for a reactor to be put right next to a crew compartment?

EDIT: Apparently ~3uW makes it safe with a 1cm boron armored crew compartment

EDIT2: Aaaaaaaaaaaaa, why are both mixed into the same radiation hazard value?

I decided to spend some time messing with mini-reactors here is the result:



Curious if anyone else has made any mini-reactors would like to compare notes on what they found useful. I am kind of running out of ideas to cut mass outside of lowering outlet and changing the thermocoupler comp.

Also if anyone finds a use for this thing or and improvement let me know always curious to see where these designs end up. I kind of gave up using it in a drone when I realized you can't make a radiator small enough to support it efficiently.

Well, I made them even smaller for my superlight gundrones for my gundrone carrier drone that spam over 50 of them to give a spectacular show case of dakka.

200 watt nuclear reactor that weighs as much as a potato is fun.

Will post it when I have access to my computer.

But thinking about it, would it be possible to actually decrease the coolant temperature of the super tiny reactor so it could maximise the usage of the smallest, lightest radiators possible without increasing its weight or size?

Actually, now that I ask this, what was the other thermocouple pair viable for lower temperature?

So, seeing as there's spare space with the 0.1 cm square radiator which is the smallest size possible.

I decided to lower the coolant temperature of my 250 watt reactor to see if I could use cheaper, lighter radiator for it.

Turns out, I can.

I got three 250 watt, all having different coolant temperature at 2400k, 1400k, and 900k.

First, the 2400k. Which is obviously the base version that can easily be upped for a couple hundreds more watt for just a couple gram if needed.

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Outer Turbo Pump is Lithium, 1 cm, 190 rpm.

Then I tried to reduce it for the second pair of thermocouple that can handle high temperature as suggested by jasonvance, nickel Chromium Iron and pyrolytic Carbon

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I also use reinforced carbon carbon for radiator as it's around 10 gram lighter than amourphous carbon radiator but more expensive at around 3 credit.

There's still quite a bit of space for raising up the power if needed.

Outer Turbo Pump is Lithium, 1 cm, 55 rpm.

And then the third one is reduced further for the next viable radiator, magnesium radiator which is as light as reinforced carbon carbon but WAY cheaper at only some 50 mc. However, it has a melting point of around 900K.

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So I made this, which is practically on the limit and honestly can't be reduced further to be worth it.

Outer Turbo Pump is Lithium, 1 cm, 65 rpm.

My ultimate goal is to see if I could use lithium radiator for the reactor, but unfortunately that's not going to happen as the number of lithium radiator required for such reactor design was too much and too heavy.

Yes, all these designs only save GRAMS in weight. But when my drone weigh barely 5 to 6 kg, every gram matters when there's 50 of them in a single carrier drone.

Anyway, that's all for my super micro reactor design.

With 900K for the radiator, put some lithium-6 around the last one and you have a space-suit-rated nuclear generator. There is probably a healthy market to be found among Belters for it.