What Fusion Power means to the Project

[tsofian]

The original designers incorporated fusion power so teams would not need to chase fuel all the time. As with a lot of decisions they made there are a number of unintended consequences that cascade from this

First, you can use fusion to power your tunnel boring machines an they become the fabulous subterrenes that UFO/Secret Underground Base folks talk about. There are US Patent documents concerning these machines from the early 1970s so it is quite possible the Project had them nearly as soon as they got fusion.
It can also provide long lasting power to bases. Bases are going to need large power generators, so fusion is ideal. Having what basically amounts to unlimited energy
If this Lockheed reactor is used as the base for the big units at the bases there is little you can’t throw raw energy at.
The prototype was planned to be a 100-megawatt deuterium and tritium reactor measuring 7 by 10 feet (2.1 by 3.0 m) that could fit on the back of a large truck and would be about one tenth the size of current reactor prototypes. 100 megawatts is enough to provide power for 80,000 people.[2][14] A series of prototypes were constructed to approach this goal.
TX Reactor[edit]
Parameters:
• 7 m diameter × 18 m long, 1 m thick blankets
• 320 MW gross
• 40 MW heating power, 2.3 s
• n = 5×1020 m−3
• β = 1 (field = 2.3 T)
• V = 16.3 m3, 51 MJ total energy
• Ti = 9.6 keV
• Te = 12.6 keV

Water can be distilled or cleaned with reverse osmosis. Non-recyclable trash can be incinerated. Any hazardous chemicals except radiological and heavy metals can be ionized into simple elements. I’d assume each base would have redundant fusion plants


How much would a bolt hole need?

Here is my guess. Each Freeze tube needs 2 kW of power to maintain its temperature. Warming would need a much higher peak load so let’s say the standard 8 person hole could cruise on 30 kW and would peak at 100 kW during wake up.
A mention was made of using Radioactive decay heat in the form of RTGs for powering bolt holes. The only really good isotope for this is Pu 238. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioi...tric_generator
Given the energy densities of this material it would require over 100 kilograms of this material per bolt hole for peak energy demand. Batteries could help with this, but even at “cruise” power demand 2,000 bolt holes require far more Pu238 than has ever been manufactured (Pu239 is far more common).
This fusion plant isn’t too much bigger than a vehicle one.