power plant question

[Jak Nazryth]

2 part question:
Question 1:
Are Traveller star ships still steam powered? Be it the burning of coal, fission, or fusion, is water still turned to steam to create electricity via a steam turbine? If not, how does a Traveller fusion power plant create an electric current?

Question 2:
Can ships be rigged to self-destruct? Create a build-up in the power plant until it explodes?
How big and explosion (how many dice) should be factored into such an event?

 

[rust]

In my settings the power plants use thermoelectric generators
to convert thermal energy into electric energy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_generator

In my settings there is no way to use a power plant as a ship's
self destruct device, the worst thing that can happen is an irre-
parable damage of the power plant itself.

 

[far-trader]

Question 2:
Can ships be rigged to self-destruct? Create a build-up in the power plant until it explodes?
How big and explosion (how many dice) should be factored into such an event?

The power plant, no. The jump drive however (presuming sufficient fuel) is another story. I don't know where to begin calculating the dice of damage though. Ship destroyed* seems sufficiently descriptive (and any other ship too nearby - not as far as weapons range but certainly boarding range).

* catastrophic misjump deliberately triggered

 

[jwpacker]

Yeah, you'd have to basically be docked with the self-destructing ship for it to cause anything but token damage - those hexes are pretty darned big, after all.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Regarding the idea of steam as part of the power plant:

I have ruled that at TL 8-11 the power plant is primarily a steam plant. I envision that the design is basically like a modern Nuclear Reactor, but replace the Fission core with a Fusion core. Water is heated and boiled to make steam which then is used to spin a turbine which makes electricity.

At TL 12+, I say that it is micro-gravity compression and thermo-electric generator or Piezoelectric converters. No steam.

That is how I justify the reduced size of the Power Plant at TL12.

 

[Ishmael]

I have ruled that at TL 8-11 the power plant is primarily a steam plant. I envision that the design is basically like a modern Nuclear Reactor, but replace the Fission core with a Fusion core. Water is heated and boiled to make steam which then is used to spin a turbine which makes electricity.

Just remember that steam turbines are limited to Carnot efficiencies. This is what would allow a gas turbine to have a higher power density than a fusion power plant ( so long as you don't include fuel tankage in the volume of the power plant).
Carnot efficiencies for steam turbine are presently ~40-50% ( the upper values in that range are for combined cycle systems that also use MHD technologies), but that's with cooling/thermal management that spaceships don't have.... discuss spaceship radiators at your own peril.
Current experiments have put direct conversion to ~86% in lab conditions. Advances in material technology should push that higher.

 

[phavoc]

I would think that if you were going to have a convential style reactor, you'd be running a liquid metal one instead of water.

 

[Easterner]

You don't create steam in spaceships.

You use heat to generate electricity. Hydrogen can be converted to plasma and is ultra hot.
Fluid-based magnetohydrodynamic (MHD)

Radioisotope thermoelectric generator is currently used on deep space probes.

Hydrogen based
Betavoltaics

And allowing for 3000 years plenty of new Handwavium will get discovered we haven't even thought of yet. In other words: the ship has power plant, it burns H and electricity is generated too.