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Post by dohboy on Mar 1, 2021 8:05:50 GMT -6
Getting a reactor to explode in a true nuclear chain reaction is so unlikely I want to claim it's impossible, but that would be an exaggeration. A saboteur causing it by monkeying with controls or even manually moving control rods IS impossible. If the saboteur was able to smuggle in several hundred pounds of high explosives, rig dozens of charges in the proper locations with precise timing, then I suspect it would be about as likely as winning the lottery. Having it happen as a result of battle damage would be much less likely. Any explosion that did take place would be very low yield.
Steam and hydrogen explosions are definitely possible results of sabotage or battle damage. You could even get the kind of criticality event where people close to the reactor see the blue flash that tells them they are dead men walking.
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Post by janxol on Mar 1, 2021 10:26:51 GMT -6
Well I believe nobody was talking about actual nuclear explosion. All (at least what I said), was with regards to steam explosions and possibly dirty-bomb style spreading of readioactive material through shellfire induced explosions. Achieving a nuclear detonation like atomic bomb inside a reactor is pretty much impossible. Too many things would need to go precisely right (or precisely wrong depending on point of view) to achieve that.
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Post by herrtom on Mar 1, 2021 11:55:09 GMT -6
Getting a reactor to explode in a true nuclear chain reaction is so unlikely I want to claim it's impossible, but that would be an exaggeration. A saboteur causing it by monkeying with controls or even manually moving control rods IS impossible. If the saboteur was able to smuggle in several hundred pounds of high explosives, rig dozens of charges in the proper locations with precise timing, then I suspect it would be about as likely as winning the lottery. Having it happen as a result of battle damage would be much less likely. Any explosion that did take place would be very low yield. Steam and hydrogen explosions are definitely possible results of sabotage or battle damage. You could even get the kind of criticality event where people close to the reactor see the blue flash that tells them they are dead men walking. Reactors simply don't contain a high enough percentage of HEU to capture enough fast neutrons to maintain a high energy fission reaction. The key ingredient in a nuclear weapon is the creation of that high neutron flux in the core combined with the maintenance of the high density of the uranium (so the neutrons are more likely to be captured by the atoms). This is the job of the explosive compression (in an implosion type) or the slug (in a gun type). In a reactor, the uranium expands from the heat and melts from the energy (a meltdown) or blows apart if its highly enriched. Neither case has remotely the same energy as a nuclear explosion. Additional side effects of the runaway reaction in a reactor can be the release of hydrogen from various sources (typically materials in the reactor can react with water to produce hydrogen and other gases at high temperatures, like zirconium) or in the case of Chernobyl, superheated steam from the coolant can overpressurize the reactor vessel and create a large explosion.
These types of failures are certainly capable of destroying or crippling the ship, but don't pose an immediate danger to anything else. It's worth noting that the reactors in combat ships should have a number of redundant systems, in that battle damage may not be likely to cause extreme failures. Critical hits, in RTW terms, would be most likely to get the reactor engineer to swear a lot and have to shut down the reactor rather than melt it down.
Admittedly, my limited experience is with nuclear rocket engines, not maritime reactors, so take me with a grain of (molten) salt.
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Post by dohboy on Mar 1, 2021 12:16:40 GMT -6
I was responding to the "saboteurs blow the reactor and take out half your fleet" thing from the previous page. You already covered it, but I couldn't help putting my 2 cents in. I am always surprised by how many people think a reactor is a bomb waiting for the chance to go off. I live in the first "city" powered by a nuclear reactor. Nuclear power was perfected a stones throw from my house. They built more than 50 experimental reactors out here, many specifically to melt them down and see what happened. Only one (SL-1) went boom, and that was steam. On a side note, before it became the National Reactor Testing Station is was the Arco Naval Proving Ground. Naval guns would be rebuilt in Pocatello then test fired out here before being reinstalled. They were still shooting 16" guns out here during Vietnam. Admittedly, my limited experience is with nuclear rocket engines, not maritime reactors, so take me with a grain of (molten) salt. Are you familiar with the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion project from the cold war era? One of the craziest ideas I ever heard. They built air cooled nuclear reactors and cobbled them together with jet engines. Another project from my neighborhood.
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Post by herrtom on Mar 1, 2021 13:11:25 GMT -6
Are you familiar with the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion project from the cold war era? One of the craziest ideas I ever heard. They built air cooled nuclear reactors and cobbled them together with jet engines. Another project from my neighborhood. That and Project Pluto stick in my mind as Profoundly Bad Ideas. The radiological hazard these kinds of projects posed to the areas they flew over (which I guess was the point with Pluto) is mindboggling. The nice thing about NERVA and its successors is that they're designed to be used in space, where the really nasty fission byproducts (cobalt, cesium, iridium, etc) aren't in danger of being spewed everywhere in case of Rapid Unplanned Disassembly.
Agreed with the perception that reactors are bombs. While they can and do fail, explosions are quite rare and not usually immensely destructive. Of the three major headline reactor accidents, Three Mile Island released a small amount of radioactive material and the reactor was put out of commission. Fukishima was put out of commission by the earthquake and over the next few days had several explosions due to failing cooling systems, and said reactors were also put out of commission. Chernobyl was the only truly disastrous accident, and was the result of a severely flawed design that even then if properly operated would not have caused the disaster. Here the reactor was completely destroyed though it's worth noting that the other reactors at the site continued to operate.
If we translate these to ship damage scenarios in game-terms, the first two would likely leave the ship dead in the water, but not much beyond that (one from a machinery malfunction and the other from battle damage), while the latter would likely cause severe damage to the ship (a really severe machinery malfunction). Interestingly, a similar thing happened to K-19 as previously mentioned in this thread.
Honestly, it would lead to a very interesting tradeoff in the game for early maritime nuclear reactors. You get the big range and power density bonus from switching to them, but you're stuck with the risk that someone isn't going to handle the reactor correctly, or a key component will fail and leave you dead in the water, or worse with severe damage and flooding. Nuclear propulsion was an important part of naval development in the last half of the century, I think it would be a big shame to leave it out.
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Post by janxol on Mar 1, 2021 14:40:11 GMT -6
Regarding wierd uses of nuclear technologies, there is also the Orion drive. But I do believe this thread is getting a bit off-topic and starting to focus on nuclear power rather than possible DLC features.
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