Brainstorming: Fusion power via counterweight

[Nuke]

4 minutes ago, Cheif Operations Director said:

We are not doing that again!

if you can name a better insulative material for containing the heat of nuclear detonations, by all means. 

[Cheif Operations Director]

Just now, Nuke said:

if you can name a better insulative material for containing the heat of nuclear detonations, by all means. 



Never said I could just lining thousands of kilometers in asbestos and then detonating a nuclear warhead underneath it is not wise. If anything fails all of that asbestos will be released into the atmosphere covering a vast part of land with the physical embodiment of lung cancers. Millions will get it and in some regards be worse than Chernobyl. I would much rather use the geothermal energy idea safer and frankly I think perhaps more power as well.

3 minutes ago, Nuke said:

if you can name a better insulative material for containing the heat of nuclear detonations, by all means. 

How about cryogenically cooled metals?

[Nuke]

1 minute ago, Cheif Operations Director said:

Never said I could just lining thousands of kilometers in asbestos and then detonating a nuclear warhead underneath it is not wise. If anything fails all of that asbestos will be released into the atmosphere covering a vast part of land with the physical embodiment of lung cancers. Millions will get it and in some regards be worse than Chernobyl. I would much rather use the geothermal energy idea safer and frankly I think perhaps more power as well.

this is in no way shape or form a serious or practical proposal so the point of safety is somewhat moot. i dont think we will be building any giant nuke powered asbestos shotguns any time soon.

[Cheif Operations Director]

Just now, Nuke said:

this is in no way shape or form a serious or practical proposal so the point of safety is somewhat moot. i dont think we will be building any giant nuke powered asbestos shotguns any time soon.



 

4 minutes ago, Cheif Operations Director said:

How about cryogenically cooled metals?

 

[Nuke]

cryogenic cooling might be neccisary anyway when blowing up nukes in a giant lead dome. i didnt do the math but what i think would happen (provided the dome is taken down to vacuum before detonation, and if you dont do this you will have a lot bigger pressure fronts to deal with, last thing you need is your outer wall and insulation cracking) is that you end up with a pool of liquid metal that you can use as a thermal battery. if you want to recharge the battery you are going to need to put the lead in the pool back on the wall presumably when it gets close to its solidification temperature. probibly through cooling the remains of the walls with internal heat exchangers, then the remaining lead can be applied again through a spraying process managed entirely with robotics.

im not saying you have to use lead either, molten salts might work. im not sure if resurfacing the dome internals would be as straight forward as i think it is. i can imagine if you were using something like wax a spray on coating would work quite well, but you want something that can hold onto heat and be stored in an insulated catch basin that can somehow survive repeated nuclear blasts. you also want something that wont vaporize easily reducing needed structural requirements to handle shock. an internal dome with enough material to repeat the process several times might work simply adding new material to the existing pool (and heat with it), and then when the dome is spent and much of the thermal energy used up, just pump all the material to an automated molding factory to re cast modular dome segments, that can be reinstalled to handle the next set of shots. 

im not quite sure what role cryogenics will play, you kind of want heat storage in this case. but they would be absolutely required to reset the whole operation to make the environment safe for robots (i wouldn't put people in there). 

Edited July 5, 2019 by Nuke

[HebaruSan]

Nobody wanted to mention this was already looked at by LANL?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_PACER

 

[Reactordrone]

Inertial confinement fusion is basically this idea. The hohlraums are pretty much smaller versions of the fusion package of a Teller Ulam weapon.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_confinement_fusion