2 ms·
I'm no nuclear engineer, but my anecdotal experience has been that nuclear plants need access to large amounts of water for cooling. I'm assuming a Martian rea
by bruce511 4y ago
I'm no nuclear engineer, but my anecdotal experience has been that nuclear plants need access to large amounts of water for cooling.
I'm assuming a Martian reactor would need some other approach give the relative scarcity of water? Sure ambient temperatures are lower, but equally the atmosphere is not very dense.
Thinking about it, burning diesel is also not attractive (lack of oxygen) and solar is weaker than earth. But I'm not seeing a lot of alternatives to solar...
- ilkkal 4y agoPrimary cooling could be molten salt or liquid metal but unless you take the power out through the Seebeck effect like RTG’s on space probes, you still need water to make steam for turbines, I guess.
- nine_k 4y agoMars does have water, mostly in form of ice. But it takes some digging. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_on_Mars https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_on_Mars