Allensh said:
I always assumed that the LHyd in addition to actually providing fuel is used as a coolant. That's a handwave, of course.
Allen
The article noted below makes some headway on the issue -the important point being that the Traveller "fusion power" is not (and probably can't be) what we think of as fusion power.
http://traveller.mu.org/house/fusion.html
Here's my combined take on it, working with that article and some thoughts on the jump bubble. The basic idea is, why do both the Jump bubble and the power plant , two rather dissimilar processes, use hydrogen; and what effects would gravitics have on fusion technology ? Can they be related ?
The quick summary of another thread or two is this: the jump bubble requires monatomic H ; one of the effects of jumpspace is to supress the values of the strong interatomic force - so, any other material than protium will basically disintergrate into hard radiation upon contact. In addition to the safety hazards, the entry into jumpspace is effected by the bursts of radiation as stray multi particle atoms fly apart.
Thus, we have a minus to the jump roll. In this model, refined fuel is hydrogen with no isotopes -mainly deuterium or tritium. That gets shunted off to the powerplant, where it is used for the cold start cache, and to enrich the fuel in general.
The fusion plant is essentially a gravitic internal compression engine (described elsewhere here), continuously compressing small bubbles of H until fusion begins in a few atoms, turning the remainder of the bubble into plasma, and thence thru a n MHD turbine and heat exchangerwavium device to provide electricity.
Only a very small part (measured in atoms) of the H is actually fused (as noted) -the bulk is to be made into plasma by the fusion spark for the MHD turbine.
Here is the detailed version, for those with insomnia......
So, assuming the gravitic compression model is usable, I see a dual or triple phase start up:
1. Since the P+P cycle fusion is very hard to start, an easier startup power source is needed to provide power for Grav compressor: so, part 1 is a more typical D+D fusion kickstarter, (this is pretty straight from http://traveller.mu.org/house/fusion.html )
2. possibly this also is providing power for a second kickstart catalyzed PP (CNO) reaction to get the grav compression running to levels needed to
3. Once the power levels are up, the gravitic system starts the compression cycle (the engineering details of a triple fusion bubble containment vessel are left as an exercise for the reader (
), beginning pulsed straight PP fusion as described above, but only allowing fusion to occur on a very small number of H atoms.
4. The pesky extra hydrogen we've been wondering about comes in here: it is plasmafied by the fusion pulse and then passed thru an MHD for power, and then thru a heat exchange box to grab the last ergsThe rest is dumped, possibly for reaction jets, or to provide the blue glow.
5. Power is first routed to the Grav system for the next pulse, and then to the ship as a whole.
6. When the reactor goes into overdrive for jump, I'd see the reaction simply allowing the fusion pulses to occur more often; possibly with a catalyst reaction to increase efficiency.
The Deuterium for the startup reactions is either from the processing of the jump fuel or provided in very small amounts by the basic power system; alternately they could be completely seperate - the excess D & T from the jump bubble could just be vented in Jumpspace or wherever. (try to be polite and avoid inhabitated areas, obviously)
The CNO for the phase two reaction cycles and can be very easily topped up just about anywhere.
Thus, the huge amount powerplant fuel is explained by lowered efficiency of the PP cycle, (but higher safety), and the fact that most of the H is used as plasma, not for as direct fusion.
Messy Hydrogen (unrefined) in the power plant can cause problems as mentioned above; and this is an even bigger issue in overclock ( along with the posited issues of non-monatomic H in the jump bubble at entry) -thus the minus to jump roll.
Hmmmm. Okay. Science and engineering flames are welcome (but helpful critques or corrections are preferred )
lol
