Talk-Polywell.org

Aliens (1986)

Ripley: Lieutenant, what do those pulse-rifles fire?
Gorman: 10 millimeter explosive tip caseless. Standard light armor-piercing round. Why?
Ripley: Well, look where your team is. They're right under the primary heat exchangers.
Gorman: So?
Ripley: So... if they fire their weapons in there, won't they rupture the cooling system?
Burke: Whoa ho-ho... yeah, she's absolutely right.
Gorman: So? So what?
Burke: Look, this whole station is basically a big fusion reactor, right? So she's talking about a thermonuclear explosion and adios muchachos.

Which should come with a "Spoiler Alert" warning.

'Cause the bugs have to die.

The funny part to me is that this, plus Starship Troopers, plus any Star Trek featuring the Borg, all served as inspiration for me to write a new short story I need to submit pretty soon. Once I took up beekeeping, my understanding of how a hive mind works shifted pretty dramatically.

I wish I knew why it was so funny. Cause the general public mistakenly thinks fusion reactors would explode if not cooled?

JoeP wrote:I wish I knew why it was so funny. Cause the general public mistakenly thinks fusion reactors would explode if not cooled?

... if it hadn't been Aliens it would have been Dark Knight Rises and too many other instances.

The DKR macguffin seems to have started out in the script as an SMR fission job before someone realized that SMR investors wouldn't be pleased at the connotations.

Tom Ligon wrote:Which should come with a "Spoiler Alert" warning.

'Cause the bugs have to die.

The funny part to me is that this, plus Starship Troopers, plus any Star Trek featuring the Borg, all served as inspiration for me to write a new short story I need to submit pretty soon. Once I took up beekeeping, my understanding of how a hive mind works shifted pretty dramatically.

Now you've done it, prodded me to write another installment.

JoeP wrote:I wish I knew why it was so funny. Cause the general public mistakenly thinks fusion reactors would explode if not cooled?

Its not the fusion reactor, its the superconducting magnets. This straight from R. W. Bussard in a discussion of tokamaks ... the energy storage in the magnets of the huge power reactors, ITER size and larger, is up in the tactical nuclear range. So if you were to lose cooling and allowed the magnets to warm above the superconducting critical temperature, they will suddenly have resistance and start turning that circulating current into heat. Which heats them further into the resistive domain. The first magnet pops off, and takes the magnet on either side out, and in short order you've released a kiloton or so of energy. It is not a thermonuclear explosion, though, just a hellacious bang sufficient to crater the base and bugs, and probably radioactive as well due to the neutron emissions from DT tokamaks.

We kinda glossed over the fact that Polywells will use superconducting magnets as well. Of course, they will be much smaller. Maybe just a few tons of energy storage.

Quenching is a bad thing, although off the top of my head, as I recall there is a quench mitigation protocol for ITER. If I had more time I would look it up.
But yes, fully agree; massive potential for a very big pop.

(I hope this picture doesn't turn Global Warmists away from safe, clean, abundant fusion power. We're just having fun.)

"pop"

Three notable words uttered by actor Billy Burke on CBS, "Zoo", 5 July 2016, about 36 min into the episode:

"...runaway fusion reaction..."