Approved Submission [Protectors of the Alliance] Standard Raiken Fusion Reactor

I think the only hiccup here is the byproduct of water.

The fusion of the two hydrogen atoms produces helium, and injecting oxygen into that produces, at best, heliox. Water is a byproduct of burning hydrogen fuel with oxygen.

The helium you get might eventually have its own uses, depending, but you definitely can't get water.

It is fusing H2 with O. Not (H+H)+O.

We aren't taking single Hydrogen atoms, we are taking Hydrogen atoms that are bound to another Hydrogen atom. They are like this before being injected (So while they sit around in a fuel tank). Raiken mine hydrogen gas giants for fuel, which are primarily made of H2, not H.

Combine this H2 with some O and we get water.

Hang on.

Just so everyone can see what we're talking about over IRC:

Combining H2 with O to get water is not fusion. That's a chemical reaction; changing molecules, not elements.

Fusion means changing elements themselves; adding to their atomic structure with additional protons to get a new, and heavier, element.

In this case, fusing H2 (two protons) with O (eight protons) nets you neon (10 protons). As well, this type of fusion isn't very energy efficient — oxygen is a less common element that is harder to fuse than hydrogen.

Thus, the water part of the reactor needs to be dropped first.

I'll admit, I just assumed you could fuse anything you wanted. Anyhow, the reactor uses H-2 as fuel and creates He-3 as a byproduct.

Since I wanted the reactor to make water for use as coolant, I adapted He-3 to do the same. However, since the He-3 will be extremely hot after being fused, it needs to be cooled. This was added into the article. After being created, He-3 is pumped out of the reactor to be cooled until it turns into a liquid. This new liquid helium is used as reactor coolant. The same principle applies to this coolant as the last coolant. The hotter the reactor gets, the more coolant is made, keeping the temperature down.

After doing more reading of the science, I'm not sure this is going to get you what you want.

While fusing deuterium (2H) with deuterium gets you the He-3 you're wanting, you're going to spend a serious amount of energy first cooling down that byproduct to the temperature it needs to be at to be useful. It means your reactors will be rather big, making your smaller ships bigger, etc.

You also have to be careful for the other waste product you're getting — neutron radiation, the net of that last neutron not being fusible material. That radiation is going to wear out your reactor technology rather fast, no matter how much beryllium you use to shield the stuff.

Let me be clear — this does work. But it means that the effective life of your reactors is going to be more limited than the kind of fusion technology accessible to the Big Three, among others.

Raiken ships and generally anything they make is larger than anyone else's. This makes sense, since they are much larger anyway. The reactor needing to be larger making the ship larger doesn't really mean anything, because the ship is ALREADY larger. As for cooling, I could just let space help cool it? Space is pretty cold. Take in some SPACE AIR for SPACE COOLING.

Nearly every fusion reaction nets a neutron. This point doesn't really change much. The big three are also netting extra neutrons.

Also, how fast a reactor wears out doesn't even affect RP. If it takes say, twenty years for a reactor to go bad, then it'll be twenty years until I have to even address it. That addressing would literally take a couple minutes marking that reactors were replaced and it took some days.

1. That's cool. I was making the point, nothing more.

2. Again, making the point.

3. And lastly, making one more point. It's so you're aware, and that others will be aware when they see your stuff.

Those things now said — approved.

Also, keep in mind that using ambient areas to help cool a nuke reactor will turn your ship into a gigantic beacon for pretty much any decent sensor package. Stealth would be all but impossible.