3 ms·
Skeptical of the superconducting magnet component. Main issue I see (when I used to think about fission fragment designs) is that some statistical fraction of t
by IIAOPSW 3y ago
Skeptical of the superconducting magnet component. Main issue I see (when I used to think about fission fragment designs) is that some statistical fraction of the fragments are going to hit your superconducting wires, introducing defects in the material that may kill the superconductivity, introducing heat that needs to be dissipated to or it will also kill superconductivity.
The aerogel approach is novel though so excited to see what they come up with.
- db48x 3y agoThere’s a layer of material between the fission fuel and the superconductors, same as the inside of a nuclear reactor. It has to withstand not just fission fragments, but also the infrared from the rather hot fuel pellets in the core. An earlier paper (<https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frspt.2023.1197347/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frspt.2023.1197...>) estimates that for a ship designed to go to Mars and back it would have to withstand 20MW/m² just from that alone.