UNLIMITED POWER (Reactor Thread (also radiators))

Actually, what radiator material works efficiently at lower temperature?

Certainly is. I just got done working on that now. Currently at just over 11kg and 600cr. I got the outlet temp down to 70K but am now trying to strike a balance between having a large thermocouple with low output and being a radiator porcupine. Presently that's an outlet temp of 250K with an internal temp near lithium's melting point (it's a great control rod material and noticeably lighter than boron on a reactor this small). I changed coolants to ethane inside (allows less depleted uranium mass to be used; which seems to be a legit low temp fuel after all) and oxygen outside (best thermal conductivity below sodium freezing point).

Next steps are to be 250-500kW and 1.2-1.5MW. As for radiators, I'm leaning toward magnesium alloys coated with amorphous carbon as a hopeful flash guard but I don't yet know. Gonna try lithium first though; just noticed it has a very high specific heat.

That has got to be a bug. Changing the enrichment percent for depleted uranium changes the power output, but does absolutely nothing to the mass and cost. (what's being enriched here?)

Moreover, using depleted uranium dioxide gives no power at any enrichment level, which I suspect is the correct behavior.


U-233 dioxide is the cheapest legit fuel I see. I'm slowly converting all my reactors to it for cost savings. For small reactors, I turn down the enrichment as far as I can, to get even more cost savings.

I see. I thought my design might only otherwise work with Am-241 from when I first flicked through fuels, but...




jonen
Oh dear. I don't expect most reactors in this thread are terribly realistic anyway, though mine may be especially egregious.

It's just trying something different to explore the implications and find out if it's worth anything. Apart from simply being curious about whether I could make such a module, and enjoying doing weird things that don't follow the meta, the idea came from having a ship loaded with thousands of tiny but long-burning flares (since they only need to be like 1.5MW) to defeat EFP and KKV spam.

The primary problem is that your secondary cooling loop is really anemic, and you are making up the difference by using a gigantic thermocouple. This is a problem because Tantalum and Tungsten are really expensive compared to the cost of a better cooling loop. Keeping the actual reactor core the same, I'd cut the thermocouple down to r:2.5 h:5.6, then fix up the heat problems by switching outer coolant to sodium and tweaking the outer pump until the core won't melt.