Realistic Antiproton Reactor (mike?)

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-01-20 07:06pm

How would a real AP reactor be designed, including control room, etc?

Obviously it would never be designed like a trek warp core, but how would a real one be fit into a ship?

jaeger115 · Post by **jaeger115** » 2003-01-20 08:40pm

How would it be superior to a fusion reactor? Antiprotons are tiny things, and give off only a bit of energy when annihilated.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-01-20 08:41pm

you do realise that antimatter is mater of antiprotons, right? Right? Or have we forgotten all science here..

jaeger115 · Post by **jaeger115** » 2003-01-20 08:51pm

It'd still be a waste. Antimatter requires magnetic containment, which takes lots of power.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-01-20 09:20pm

And fusion doesnt? all modern fusion reactors require huge superconducting magnets to confine the 1,000,000 degree plasma otherwise it would melt through the walls faster then you can blink. And they STILL need cooling!

jaeger115 · Post by **jaeger115** » 2003-01-20 09:36pm

What if the antimatter loses containment? The whole place would go off in a brilliant white pulse of light.

The Silence and I · Post by **The Silence and I** » 2003-01-20 09:59pm

What if the antimatter loses containment? The whole place would go off in a brilliant white pulse of light.

And loss of plasma containment in a fusion reactor is just gonna go unnoticed???

It'd still be a waste. Antimatter requires magnetic containment, which takes lots of power.

Who... Think about how fusion works man. When you fuse atomic nuclei, some, SOME, of their mass is converted to energy. That energy must power the containment fields you also need with antimatter. However, with antimatter, ALL the mass of the nuclei (and, for what it's worth the electrons too) is converted into energy. You gain far more than you ever could with fusion! Think about it.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-01-20 10:14pm

What if the antimatter loses containment? The whole place would go off in a brilliant white pulse of light.

Actually no. If you had a real working AP reactor, youd flood the chamber with hydrogen then let the AM react with the hydrogen gas. If the AM storage tanks loose power you'd be fucked

Actually, if its for a spaceship you'd jetison the tanks, but superconductor magnets are VERY unlikely to loose power.

And loss of plasma containment in a fusion reactor is just gonna go unnoticed???

Yes, because upon loss of containment the reactor chamber would flood with standard atmosphere and quickly cool down any plasma within. Fusion would cease immediately.

BUT IT DOESNT MATTER! O_O I dont care about safety, were assuming the reactor is safer then modern nuke plants.

The Dark · Post by **The Dark** » 2003-01-20 10:17pm

The Silence and I wrote:
What if the antimatter loses containment? The whole place would go off in a brilliant white pulse of light.
And loss of plasma containment in a fusion reactor is just gonna go unnoticed???

Actually, one of the new prototype reactors uses a self-healing plasma. Somehow, it tends towards maintaining the shape needed for reaction.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2003-01-20 11:12pm

Of course, you could use normal magnets, not electromagnets, to maintain containment of the antimatter, thus ensuring that even with a loss of power, you won't es'plode. But that's a bit advanced for people who think that antimatter power generation wouldn't yield much more energy than fusion.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-01-20 11:18pm

SirNitram wrote:Of course, you could use normal magnets, not electromagnets, to maintain containment of the antimatter, thus ensuring that even with a loss of power, you won't es'plode. But that's a bit advanced for people who think that antimatter power generation wouldn't yield much more energy than fusion.

Only an electromagnet can generate enough of an electromagnetic field to get the job done, because you can put huge amounts of current through it. Throwing ferromagnetism at the problem would be like trying to hold back a Saturn V rocket with a bungee cord.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2003-01-20 11:28pm

Darth Wong wrote:
SirNitram wrote:Of course, you could use normal magnets, not electromagnets, to maintain containment of the antimatter, thus ensuring that even with a loss of power, you won't es'plode. But that's a bit advanced for people who think that antimatter power generation wouldn't yield much more energy than fusion.
Only an electromagnet can generate enough of an electromagnetic field to get the job done, because you can put huge amounts of current through it. Throwing ferromagnetism at the problem would be like trying to hold back a Saturn V rocket with a bungee cord.

Forgive my ignorance then. Is there a feasible way to maintain containment, short of just using a seperate generator for the electromagnets(Which can also fail..)?

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-01-20 11:30pm

SirNitram wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:
SirNitram wrote:Of course, you could use normal magnets, not electromagnets, to maintain containment of the antimatter, thus ensuring that even with a loss of power, you won't es'plode. But that's a bit advanced for people who think that antimatter power generation wouldn't yield much more energy than fusion.
Only an electromagnet can generate enough of an electromagnetic field to get the job done, because you can put huge amounts of current through it. Throwing ferromagnetism at the problem would be like trying to hold back a Saturn V rocket with a bungee cord.
Forgive my ignorance then. Is there a feasible way to maintain containment, short of just using a seperate generator for the electromagnets(Which can also fail..)?

If you could fabricate anti-iron pellets, you could easily contain them with low-powered magnets. But any sudden acceleration would be a killer. There isn't really any realistic, safe way to store antimatter; it is too volatile.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-01-20 11:45pm

fuck storage, I just wanna know about the generator itself :p

Post by **AdmiralKanos** » 2003-01-20 11:50pm

It would be tricky to make a M/AM reactor work. If you send individual electron/positron pairs together, you get gamma rays, which are very difficult to harvest into useful energy (a lot of people seem to ignore the question of how you get useful energy out of the reaction). They are too destructive and too penetrative. If you send proton/antiproton pairs together, you get a lot more junk, but again, it would be difficult to harvest into useful energy.

But if you start sending dense streams of matter together, you've got a real problem because the energetic emissions from reactions en masse will heat up the M/AM streams coming into the reactor, which will tend to reduce the likelihood of clean reactions and increase the rate at which stray matter and antimatter will be sent flying out of the containment area and into the reactor walls.

In short, you are looking at a reactor which has horrendous component wear rates even under normal operation and extremely low full-cycle efficiency because of the difficulty of converting the radiation into a useful form.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-01-20 11:59pm

couldnt you flood the chamber with gas and then let the AM be released in the center so that it is away from the walls, surrounded by much more normal matter, and the radiation would be smothered by the gas (like xrays through open air)?

The Dark · Post by **The Dark** » 2003-01-21 12:01am

kojikun wrote:couldnt you flood the chamber with gas and then let the AM be released in the center so that it is away from the walls, surrounded by much more normal matter, and the radiation would be smothered by the gas (like xrays through open air)?

Except for the fact that the AM would react with the gas, maybe.

Post by **AdmiralKanos** » 2003-01-21 12:04am

kojikun wrote:couldnt you flood the chamber with gas and then let the AM be released in the center so that it is away from the walls, surrounded by much more normal matter, and the radiation would be smothered by the gas (like xrays through open air)?

Which means that the gas will be heated up by the radiation, which in turn causes all of those problems I mentioned. And again, the rate of the reaction is important; at high reaction rates, the gas will expand explosively, becoming both more difficult to contain and less likely to react with the antimatter. And now you've got to harvest this gas for energy; how are you going to do that? You don't just magically go "hot gas -> electricity".

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-01-21 12:48am

Bah.

GrandMasterTerwynn · Post by **GrandMasterTerwynn** » 2003-01-21 12:48am

kojikun wrote:How would a real AP reactor be designed, including control room, etc?

Obviously it would never be designed like a trek warp core, but how would a real one be fit into a ship?

Realistic antiproton/proton reactor: Requires incredible quantities of shielding. (Antiproton/proton reactions are messy and produce gamma rays.) Also requires humongous magnetic bottles that require lots of energy to maintain. (As antiprotons don't care what protons they react with.)

You probably want to locate the reactor as far away from civilization as possible. (Nuclear meltdown just causes cancer. Antimatter powerplant meltdown causes widespread devastation and mass extinction.)

It would have to be completely automated. I'd put the control room hundreds of miles away, or, failing that, fifty miles away and several hundred feet underground. Maybe relocate the entire population of southern Colorado and run the antimatter plant from Cheyenne Mountain.

But the question is why?

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-01-21 01:03am

terwynn you go too far. the radiation hazards are not as great as you make them out to be.

what about the possibility of using some form of antimatter other then protons and eletrons? Antiparticles only react with identical antiparticles (positrons dont annihilate with protons) so you could safely store say .. antimuons (just to pull a particle out of my ass) without using magnetic containment.

GrandMasterTerwynn · Post by **GrandMasterTerwynn** » 2003-01-21 02:18am

kojikun wrote:terwynn you go too far. the radiation hazards are not as great as you make them out to be.

what about the possibility of using some form of antimatter other then protons and eletrons? Antiparticles only react with identical antiparticles (positrons dont annihilate with protons) so you could safely store say .. antimuons (just to pull a particle out of my ass) without using magnetic containment.

Gamma rays are highly penetrating. Radiation is a serious hazard with an antimatter plant. Not to mention the occasional particle escaping containment and eating at the reactor walls. Near as I can tell, the most 'efficient' M/AM reaction is positron/electron. Anything more massive gets messy. And you still need espensive magnetic containment systems. Antimatter can't come in contact with matter at all. And worse, the production of antimatter is an extremely energy-intensive process. An antimatter reactor couldn't possibly break even, having to power it's containment fields, and especially after you factor in the energy cost of producing the antimatter fuel in the first place.

Arrow · Post by **Arrow** » 2003-01-21 08:08am

What about using a solid form of antimatter? Say anti-iron and iron reactions. Would that make storage easier?

ClaysGhost · Post by **ClaysGhost** » 2003-01-21 08:22am

kojikun wrote:terwynn you go too far. the radiation hazards are not as great as you make them out to be.

what about the possibility of using some form of antimatter other then protons and eletrons? Antiparticles only react with identical antiparticles (positrons dont annihilate with protons) so you could safely store say .. antimuons (just to pull a particle out of my ass) without using magnetic containment.

You would need a particle that doesn't usually appear in ordinary matter, but that very property usually indicates that the particle is unstable and has a short lifetime. Muons have lifetimes of about 2.2 x 10^-6 seconds. You could extend this by circulating the muons at (ultra) relativistic speeds in a storage ring, but that would require extra energy to make up the loss from synchrotron radiation. If you had a power supply failure, the ship wouldn't blow up, but your fuel would rapidly decay into electrons and neutrinos.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2003-01-21 08:38am

A/M reactors are only seen for one real future purpose and that's powering rockets to extreme subluminal velocities with less fuel and the greatest of efficiencies. You still have the containment, radiation and threat of something wearing out, but by the time we have A/M rockets I doubt half of that will be as problematic. That or we find something else nearly as effective, simple fusion for instance.

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Realistic Antiproton Reactor (mike?)

Realistic Antiproton Reactor (mike?)

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