same shit every day, on god
same shit every day, on god
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296 comments
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I wonder if nuclear would get more traction If it was pitched as enhanced steam power instead
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"It's a blockchain of an highly enhanced hydrogen process. Thanks to its AI quantum mechanism it manages to increase the energy output by a ton through its cloud."
Just tell that to investors and they'll gobble it up. /s
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Needs some ai in there
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Done!
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INVEST
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Where's the cloud? The cloud has to be involved somehow.
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Back to steam with the clouds here…
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Yeah, sure, but I'm just not seeing enough labubu in your concept.
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I wonder how fast we could get a steam train to go if we stuck a suitably shaped non-critical amount of plutonium in the firebox.
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And replace the pistons with a turbine...
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And replace the locomotive with a Delorean.
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Then it'll only get up to 88 mph.
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What does a mile per hour really even mean when you can turn back time? 🤔️
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As fast as it will roll down a hill. A non-critical mass of plutonium isn't going to produce any significant heat for the boiler.
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if we stuck a suitably shaped non-critical amount of plutonium in the firebox.
Non-critical? There isn't much energy released from natural decay compared to criticality. We created things like this to power space probes like the Voyager I and II craft. 4.5kg of this Plutonium created about 2500w of thermal energy the the beginning of its life and the power declines from there.
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So I need 80 tons of it in my firebox?
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You can boost it by hollowing out the middle and filling it with tritium, but plutonium is dense, so 80 tons will probably fit in the firebox just fine.
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but plutonium is dense, so 80 tons will probably fit in the firebox
I feel like there's a thing that will happen when I put that much in such a comparatively small place.
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It'll heat up the firebox, which is exactly what the firebox wants to happen. It's not like we're using precisely-timed explosives to briefly make the mass much more than critical and counter its desire to blow itself apart for long enough that it blows other things apart, too.
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Well, you'd then have another problem. Unlike coal/wood/oil fuel, you can't turn off radioactive decay.
You'd have megawatts (gigawatts?) of thermal energy boiling off all your water pretty quickly, and likely eventually melting down your steam engine firebox, and it would be that hot for decades!
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Nuclear Powered Steam Locomotives
Pros:
- Looks cool as hell.
- Only needs to be refuled every 25 years.
- It's a steam locomotive.
- It's a steam locomotive.
- Did I mention it's a steam locomotive?
Cons:
- Have to replace the fireman with a nuclear engineer.
- Still have to stop to grease bearings and take on water periodically.
- Hazardous radioactive materials.
Pros clearly outweigh the cons. What are we waiting for?
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Hilariously this was a plot point in a book I read recently. Isambard Kingdom Brunel replaced the firebox with some poorly shielded uranium, but the initial locomotive that was to demonstrate the technology was sabotaged and exploded, killing his parents.
This same book also had a fictional mad inventor who created a part newt-human hybrid named Victoria with womanly assets if you catch my drift, who upon failing to educate it he sent to a brothel because he couldn't stand to "dispose of it" but when the princess and heir to the throne Elizabeth went missing, the newt-human hybrid Victoria was installed on the throne to prevent a constitutional crisis. And this is all events that occurred in the first 2 pages, so I'm not even spoiling anything!
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aaaaand saved
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I'll be real, I absolutely loved the first story, it took a little bit to get into the second one (but thoroughly enjoyed it after all) and I gave up partway through the third one because I was struggling to get pulled in and my library book was due soon anyways. So absolutely worth it for the first two stories at least, and hopefully you enjoy the third one more than I did!
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296 comments