U.S. Military’s mobile mini-nuclear

[rcaf_777]

https://energypost.eu/u-s-militarys-mobile-mini-nuclear-fewer-fuel-supply-convoys-mean-fewer-casualties/


http://www.holosgen.com/

[mmartin798]

You might see this in my game if the logistics allow it. In the white paper, a 30MW unit uses 19.6 tonnes of fuel to startup, and an additional 3.5 tonnes per year to operate. Given the 20 year life of the unit, 90 tonnes of fuel is not that unreasonable for a modest-sized base.

[nduffy]

Hi Long time lurker here. Something I am doing and will future do is to move away from fusion powered vehicles to Nuclear Diamond Batteries or also known as Nuclear Decay Batteries. I saw an article not long ago that said there is a Cali based company that is starting the process of using Carbon 14 waste and turning it into a diamond, a radioactive diamond. It is then encased in a coating of Carbon 12 and then through various processes becomes a battery. These batteries then have the potential to last hundreds if not thousands of years. They are scale able and can be eventually recycled through their processes to be reused. The batteries being made of diamond are virtually indestructible. I rest the time lines in a game and decided to run Morrow vehicles on this idea. A vehicle could run for its "designed" life or until such time it is destroyed or the GM takes it away. In the case the team loses the vehicle the battery can be salvaged and put to other uses. I also loved your post here about the portable nuclear power plants. Definitely will be using that idea for a future campaign or story line/arc. Here is the link to the battery company if anyone is interested. Any of these I could see The Morrow Project jumping on or utilizing. https://ndb.technology/

[mmartin798]

Thanks for sharing this. Having studied physics in college, but for a number of reasons was not able to finish my degree, I find these kind of things facinating. A couple quick updates in case you are wondering about developments in this technology.

The C14->N14+e of the original battery was pretty weak in power density. A group in Moscow made it 10X more power dense by using Ni63 as the radioisotope, making it powerful enough for satellites and pacemakers.

The one you would need would follow the scale up efforts of NDB's work. I do believe they want to use P238 and U232, but bonded and in small quantities to make them not usable for anything but a battery.

[nduffy]

I am no means a scientist but I do find this stuff super fascinating and have looked to it as potential use for Morrow scenarios. I find nuclear batteries more program friendly than small fusion reactors for vehicles and small bases. Also think about the fun if you had a flashlight that had a 500 year life or batteries that were just a long.(this also opens up great campaign ideas and or plots/subplots) Talk about fun as a GM and you have the bad guys hunting your team down for their tech.(common theme). I am also fascinated with fuel cells but i do find the flaw that they are usually dependent on a fuel source and catalyst (correct me if I am wrong). So unless you have access to the fuel your kinda screwed. Fusion does have its place as a large vehicle towed generator or at a regional supply base or "district" base in my games but I would rather give my teams a vehicle that they can not have to worry about fuel on a long time game. We once had a Morrow game run almost 2 years straight,(twice a month for 2 years) also had a Twilight campaign that ran for over 4 years. Fuel was the always concern...

[mmartin798]

Fuel cells do suffer from both problems. The biggest obstacle to cost-effectiveness is the platinum used in the catalyst by most fuel cells. There is some promising work on a non-noble metal nanostructured catalyst that uses nickel, iron and cobalt that use a 25% solution of ethanol in water for fuel. They are not very big right now. Mostly on the scale of 0.8-2W, but a demonstration stack was operating with voltages between 25-40V.

Though the 4th edition HAAM suit is powered by a 10kW ethanol fuel cell. Maybe Bruce brought back some better fuel cell tech.