Post by wlbjork on Mar 2, 2021 7:51:23 GMT -6
One thread has got a little derailed by nuclear power and the potential fallout of battle damage and sabotage, so a new thread:
The advantage of a nuclear reactor is that they have an endurance measured in years rather than days or weeks. The limiting factors are now supplies and the endurance of the crew.
In game terms, this would mean that opting for a nuclear reactor in place of the fossil fuel engines would result in the difference between 'short', 'medium', long' and 'extremely long' ranges would be negligible. The weight (not to mention cost and maintenance) of the "engine" would very likely increase in itself, but overall I expect there would be a saving at the 'long' and 'very long' bands. We may also see some weight saving at higher speeds.
The disadvantages. Well, the single biggest issue is that we don't have any clue on how battle damage will actually affect such vessels. There are various designs that should alleviate any damage, but they have not been put to the test. Plus, real world experience with conventional ships have shown that a 'golden BB' can result in rapid destruction.
Having said that, the real world does have a large number of incidents in which problems with reactors and/or ancillary equipment have become quite serious. There have been multiple factors in those incidents, but there is no reason why the reasons in our time could not be replaced by battle damage, or even sabotage in some cases.
*Chernobyl: An experiment designed to increase the safety of the reactor was badly delayed and was run by a crew unprepared for said experiment. The experiment required some fail-safe features to be disabled (otherwise the experiment would also fail!). The design of the reactor resulted in an excess loss of power, attempts to bring the power levels back up were not correctly regulated and ultimately resulted in the reactor itself exploding and the core catching fire, compounded by the use of flammable materials in the construction of the reactor. The results were, quite frankly, devastating. It is unknown what the exact level of radiation emission was, but estimates are 5.6 Roentgens/second (for reference, a lethal dose is considered to be 500 Roentgens over 5 hours) in the most affected area. Of greater interest is the size of the evacuated zone - 30km (19 miles) within 10 days. Subsequently, the Chernobyl Exclusion zone was expanded to cover 2,600 square km (1000 square miles).
*Fukushima: An earthquake caused the reactors to automatically shutdown ("SCRAM", not quite a magic wand but usually buys enough time to solve the issue). Unfortunately the ensuing tsunami disabled the emergency backup generators, resulting in coolant pumps going offline. Attempts to use other generators were largely unsuccessful, resulting in 3 reactor cores melting down and 3 hydrogen explosions. Again, the immediate response was a 20-30km evacuation zone around the plant.
*K-431: The Soviet Submarine K-431 (originally K-31) had been refuelled when part of the system was found to have been reassembled incorrectly. During the remedial process, the control rods were lifted too high resulting in the reactor going prompt critical and exploding, expelling the new fuel rods and rupturing the pressure hull. After a resulting fire was extinguished, assessment of contamination began. The majority of particles fell within a 50-100 metre radius, though an area of forest measuring about 2 sq. km was also contaminated. Fortunately, as this was fresh fuel the particles were less dangerous than in the case of Chernobyl.
*Three Mile Island: An undetected loss of coolant resulted in the reactor temperature rising. Although the fail-safe SCRAM system performed as desired, other systems had been shut down which resulted in further heat build-up in the system and caused a partial melt-down (that is, part of the fuel had melted but was contained by the reactor). A hydrogen bubble was detected, fortunately there was no oxygen and thus no explosion. Although some nuclear material was released, it was comparatively small and no long term evacuation was required.
*K-19: The Soviet submarine K-19 (The Widowmaker of the film, Hiroshima according to the crew) suffered a cooling failure. The crew managed to resolve the problem when the core temperature was 1073K - just under the melting point of Uranium. Contamination was fairly widespread, and there were 22 fatalities within two years of the incident. None the less, the damage was significant enough that the reactor and some compartments had to be completely removed and were disposed of at sea.
*Ice -breaker Lenin: Two incidents with this ship. Firstly a partial meltdown due to removing coolant before spent fuel rods, resulting in approximately 60% of the fuel melting and requiring disposal of the fuel, grid and control elements. Secondly a steam leak which the crew found by smashing through the concrete and radiation shield - only to then realise the damage was irreparable. This required all three reactors to be blown off and replaced by two new reactors.
Additionally, there have been numerous leaks in various systems that have lead to some form of contamination of vessels. In the most severe cases, entire compartments have had to be replaced due to said contamination.
The good news is that as smaller devices, any resulting disaster from such an item will be much smaller in effect - compare the area affected by K-431 to that of Chernobyl for example. The bad news is that in the right circumstances, such an event could affect a dozen or so ships - for some smaller navies, this could mean as much as half their fleet taken out of action (at least until they are decontaminated).
As I say, some of the above can quite easily become battle damage effects - hits can disable the control rods, the cooling system, steam pipes etc. - and the more such systems are disabled the greater the chance of a major reactor incident occurring.
The question is how much of this should the programming team attempt to simulate, and is it a good idea to spend time on this? Ultimately it is, of course, their decision to make.
My thoughts are this would be a very bold move. Whilst having nuclear propulsion available with the resulting increase in range would be a big bonus, it is offset by having a multiple component system where damage to several components might not be critical in themselves but are catastrophic when combined. I personally feel that effort would be better directed towards getting all other aspects of the expansion to work.
The advantage of a nuclear reactor is that they have an endurance measured in years rather than days or weeks. The limiting factors are now supplies and the endurance of the crew.
In game terms, this would mean that opting for a nuclear reactor in place of the fossil fuel engines would result in the difference between 'short', 'medium', long' and 'extremely long' ranges would be negligible. The weight (not to mention cost and maintenance) of the "engine" would very likely increase in itself, but overall I expect there would be a saving at the 'long' and 'very long' bands. We may also see some weight saving at higher speeds.
The disadvantages. Well, the single biggest issue is that we don't have any clue on how battle damage will actually affect such vessels. There are various designs that should alleviate any damage, but they have not been put to the test. Plus, real world experience with conventional ships have shown that a 'golden BB' can result in rapid destruction.
Having said that, the real world does have a large number of incidents in which problems with reactors and/or ancillary equipment have become quite serious. There have been multiple factors in those incidents, but there is no reason why the reasons in our time could not be replaced by battle damage, or even sabotage in some cases.
*Chernobyl: An experiment designed to increase the safety of the reactor was badly delayed and was run by a crew unprepared for said experiment. The experiment required some fail-safe features to be disabled (otherwise the experiment would also fail!). The design of the reactor resulted in an excess loss of power, attempts to bring the power levels back up were not correctly regulated and ultimately resulted in the reactor itself exploding and the core catching fire, compounded by the use of flammable materials in the construction of the reactor. The results were, quite frankly, devastating. It is unknown what the exact level of radiation emission was, but estimates are 5.6 Roentgens/second (for reference, a lethal dose is considered to be 500 Roentgens over 5 hours) in the most affected area. Of greater interest is the size of the evacuated zone - 30km (19 miles) within 10 days. Subsequently, the Chernobyl Exclusion zone was expanded to cover 2,600 square km (1000 square miles).
*Fukushima: An earthquake caused the reactors to automatically shutdown ("SCRAM", not quite a magic wand but usually buys enough time to solve the issue). Unfortunately the ensuing tsunami disabled the emergency backup generators, resulting in coolant pumps going offline. Attempts to use other generators were largely unsuccessful, resulting in 3 reactor cores melting down and 3 hydrogen explosions. Again, the immediate response was a 20-30km evacuation zone around the plant.
*K-431: The Soviet Submarine K-431 (originally K-31) had been refuelled when part of the system was found to have been reassembled incorrectly. During the remedial process, the control rods were lifted too high resulting in the reactor going prompt critical and exploding, expelling the new fuel rods and rupturing the pressure hull. After a resulting fire was extinguished, assessment of contamination began. The majority of particles fell within a 50-100 metre radius, though an area of forest measuring about 2 sq. km was also contaminated. Fortunately, as this was fresh fuel the particles were less dangerous than in the case of Chernobyl.
*Three Mile Island: An undetected loss of coolant resulted in the reactor temperature rising. Although the fail-safe SCRAM system performed as desired, other systems had been shut down which resulted in further heat build-up in the system and caused a partial melt-down (that is, part of the fuel had melted but was contained by the reactor). A hydrogen bubble was detected, fortunately there was no oxygen and thus no explosion. Although some nuclear material was released, it was comparatively small and no long term evacuation was required.
*K-19: The Soviet submarine K-19 (The Widowmaker of the film, Hiroshima according to the crew) suffered a cooling failure. The crew managed to resolve the problem when the core temperature was 1073K - just under the melting point of Uranium. Contamination was fairly widespread, and there were 22 fatalities within two years of the incident. None the less, the damage was significant enough that the reactor and some compartments had to be completely removed and were disposed of at sea.
*Ice -breaker Lenin: Two incidents with this ship. Firstly a partial meltdown due to removing coolant before spent fuel rods, resulting in approximately 60% of the fuel melting and requiring disposal of the fuel, grid and control elements. Secondly a steam leak which the crew found by smashing through the concrete and radiation shield - only to then realise the damage was irreparable. This required all three reactors to be blown off and replaced by two new reactors.
Additionally, there have been numerous leaks in various systems that have lead to some form of contamination of vessels. In the most severe cases, entire compartments have had to be replaced due to said contamination.
The good news is that as smaller devices, any resulting disaster from such an item will be much smaller in effect - compare the area affected by K-431 to that of Chernobyl for example. The bad news is that in the right circumstances, such an event could affect a dozen or so ships - for some smaller navies, this could mean as much as half their fleet taken out of action (at least until they are decontaminated).
As I say, some of the above can quite easily become battle damage effects - hits can disable the control rods, the cooling system, steam pipes etc. - and the more such systems are disabled the greater the chance of a major reactor incident occurring.
The question is how much of this should the programming team attempt to simulate, and is it a good idea to spend time on this? Ultimately it is, of course, their decision to make.
My thoughts are this would be a very bold move. Whilst having nuclear propulsion available with the resulting increase in range would be a big bonus, it is offset by having a multiple component system where damage to several components might not be critical in themselves but are catastrophic when combined. I personally feel that effort would be better directed towards getting all other aspects of the expansion to work.