Uranium Mod

[Joshiewowa]

This mod that I'm working on adds Uranium as a fuel. Right now I have made a copy of the standard nuclear engine and made it use Uranium, if anyone would like to submit a design or would like to do some testing for me, either PM me or post here.

Download Link: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/nuclear-engine-mod/

If anyone would like to submit images, or offer help with texturing or modelling, PM me.

Edited August 29, 2013 by Joshiewowa
Uploaded mod file to spaceport.

[astropapi1]

Pics? Adding a new resource isn't THAT much of a mod. Plus, you'd have to include another set of tanks with Uranium.

[Kerbal01]

Could you make a model of the Russian NTR, the RD-0410?

[TheSaint]

You might want to take a closer look at how nuclear thermal rockets actually work. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_thermal_rocket) Although uranium (or some other fissionable) is "consumed" in the rocket's operation, it isn't like it flows into the rocket from a tank. The rocket engine itself is a nuclear reactor that contains the nuclear fuel. (That's why the LV-N has such a poor TWR.) This reactor heats up a reaction mass (liquid hydrogen in reality, liquid fuel in Kerbality) and expels it through a nozzle to produce thrust. The amount of uranium consumed per second would be vanishingly small, the fuel in the reactor when it is built should allow it to run anywhere from a couple of years to possibly a decade, depending on a number of factors such as reactor design, fuel enrichment level, average power levels, etc.

Which is not to say that you shouldn't make a mod that uses uranium as a fuel. Just realize that your mod is making the game less realistic, not more.

[Joshiewowa]

You might want to take a closer look at how nuclear thermal rockets actually work. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_thermal_rocket) Although uranium (or some other fissionable) is "consumed" in the rocket's operation, it isn't like it flows into the rocket from a tank. The rocket engine itself is a nuclear reactor that contains the nuclear fuel. (That's why the LV-N has such a poor TWR.) This reactor heats up a reaction mass (liquid hydrogen in reality, liquid fuel in Kerbality) and expels it through a nozzle to produce thrust. The amount of uranium consumed per second would be vanishingly small, the fuel in the reactor when it is built should allow it to run anywhere from a couple of years to possibly a decade, depending on a number of factors such as reactor design, fuel enrichment level, average power levels, etc.

Which is not to say that you shouldn't make a mod that uses uranium as a fuel. Just realize that your mod is making the game less realistic, not more.

Thanks for the info. I didn't know most of this stuff, but I did know that they don't use Uranium like I was making it look like. I'm using it as a placeholder now.

[Joshiewowa]

Could you make a model of the Russian NTR, the RD-0410?

Right now, no I cant. To put it rather bluntly, I suck at modeling. I am just now starting to get the hang of it, and I barely understand just the basic attributes.

[Joshiewowa]

Pics? Adding a new resource isn't THAT much of a mod. Plus, you'd have to include another set of tanks with Uranium.

I'll be uploading pictures ASAP.

[Patupi]

Actually, though normal solid core nuclear rockets work like that there was a proposed gas core nuclear rocket that used powdered uranium (or plutonium) as the heat source. It ionized the powder, used magnets to hold it in a ball, then flowed hydrogen around it. Some uranium was lost to the flow so it needed to be replenished. I believe it was intended to be a plasma around the core, contained by a pinch field mag bottle. Honestly the last time I read anything on this was twenty years ago so I may be misremembering some of it, but it definitely was a real design, though I believe never built.

If you made it use mostly hydrogen with a small amount of uranium (or Blutonium to be more Kerbalish) I think that would represent a gas core nuclear rocket fairly well.

[TheSaint]

Hadn't thought about gas-core. The Wiki article I linked above does talk about them. Gas core does involve the loss of nuclear fuel (unless you use a "light bulb" design), but it also involves spraying highly radioactive uranium and fission products out with the exhaust. If you're going that far, a nuclear salt water rocket is a more efficient choice. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_salt-water_rocket). But if you wanted to model a gas-core nuclear rocket that consumed liquid fuel, a small amount of uranium, and had an Isp of 3,000 or so that would reflect a physical possibility that is way beyond our current engineering capabilities. Not sure if or how to model the consequences of the radioactive exhaust.

[Patupi]

I thought that the gas core was higher efficiency than a salt water rocket? Hmm, well it was a long time ago I read up on them. 3000 seems a little high for a nuke, but maybe so. Or maybe just too high to match in with KSP. I was thinking more 1500 or so as a mid ground between ion and nukes, with the add on of severe radiation exhaust and extra, rare fuel needed as well as the hydrogen reaction mass.

[TheSaint]

An Isp of 3,000 is actually low for a gas-core, it could range as high as 5,000. NSWRs get up into Project Orion levels of Isp, 10,000 or more would be a reasonable estimate. But your fuel will go off like a nuclear bomb if it escapes its containment. I wouldn't ride in the damned thing.

[Joshiewowa]

I think it was the liquid core that mentioned spraying radioactive exhaust everywhere.

[quote name=Nuclear thermal rocket

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]Robert Zubrin has proposed an alternative liquid-core design, the nuclear salt-water rocket, wherein water is the working fluid and neutron moderator. The nuclear fuel is not retained, drastically simplifying the design. However, by its very design, the rocket would discharge massive quantities of extremely radioactive waste and could only be safely operated well outside the Earth's atmosphere and perhaps even entirely outside earth's magnetosphere.

[TheSaint]

I think it was the liquid core that mentioned spraying radioactive exhaust everywhere.

All of them will release nuclear fuel and fission products (FFP) to one degree or another. The solid core or the nuclear light bulb designs use a physical containment, so they would only lose FFP if that containment were damaged. The liquid and gas cores use some form of soft containment (centrifugal force, magnetic fields, etc.) so they will reduce their losses, but inevitably some of the FFP will make their way into the exhaust in these designs. The NSWR is the worst because it makes no attempt at containment at all. It deliberately ejects all of its unspent fuel and fission products into the exhaust.

And, to be completely fair, the exhaust from the solid core and light bulb designs would be slightly radioactive as well. Neutron absorption will convert a small fraction of the hydrogen reaction mass into deuterium or tritium. But it would be orders of magnitude less than the others.

[Patupi]

Same as the talk of Fusion reactors and engines being 'non-radioactive'. Say that to the people who have to clean the fusion toroid out after it's lifetime of use! OK, fusion doesn't produce much radiation compared to fission, but it does produce some, again mostly secondary radiation in the casing. Still hoping they get a workable fusion reactor up and running sometimes (Curses Fleishman and Ponds that they couldn't get something out of that debacle! )

[TheSaint]

Yeah, no nuclear process is completely free of contamination, but some of them are orders of magnitude less of a problem than others. The good news with fusion is that the fuel itself doesn't produce any long-lived byproducts like fission does. But, depending on the actual fusion process it may produce neutron activation in the surrounding equipment, with cobalt-60 being the primary concern. So a fusion reactor won't produce any high-level fuel waste that needs to be offloaded, but when it reaches end of life the entire primary will probably be classified as high-level waste. I can live with that.