Fun toy the Navy could add with a Polywell-equipped fleet

[MSimon]

Fair enough! Just remember that you will have to change that water out regularly or run it through treatment every day or so. Demin water likes metals. It starts dissolving them fairly quickly.

I was a Naval Nuke. We paid a lot of attention to water quality. pH, dissolved solids etc. And not just in the primary loop. With the instrumentation available today the whole operation is easily automated.

[kunkmiester]

From what I can tell, a polywell and all it's attendant stuff(cryo, power converters, etc.) takes up about as much space as the reactor and steam gear for a fission system. On the other hand, the shielding and other concerns are less, meaning it's a lot lighter.

There's also this:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/01/365-me ... motor.html

Which makes the cryo plant dual purpose.

[MSimon]

From what I can tell, a polywell and all it's attendant stuff(cryo, power converters, etc.) takes up about as much space as the reactor and steam gear for a fission system. On the other hand, the shielding and other concerns are less, meaning it's a lot lighter.

There's also this:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/01/365-me ... motor.html

Which makes the cryo plant dual purpose.

Handy. That.

[D Tibbets]

Speaking of superconducting moters, along with magrids. On a thread talking about ITER problems, it's mentioned that alot of thermal energy can be released if the supeconducter quenches. How robust can a 35 MW superconducting moter be considering the large torques it will need to handle?


Dan Tibbets

[MSimon]

Speaking of superconducting moters, along with magrids. On a thread talking about ITER problems, it's mentioned that alot of thermal energy can be released if the supeconducter quenches. How robust can a 35 MW superconducting moter be considering the large torques it will need to handle?

Dan Tibbets

The design must be fairly robust because the Navy is interested in it for ship propulsion.