Blow the Powerplant! Really?

[Magnus von Thornwood]

A round of "Yes.".

Remembering the movie "Alien", didn't Ripley have a long procedure to follow in order to blow the ship's reactor? When she tried to turn it off, she had past the point of no return.
(Should probably pull the movie and watch it again)

Yep, she had o raise the four control rods, rotate them and push them back into place in a sequence. Then she had to pull down an equal number of large breakers.

Past T-10 Minutes, Mother could not stop the reaction even when Ripely restarted the cooling system.

I love that scene. One day I am going to see if I can actually read the instructions. So, yeah there for sure was a point of no return.

 

[aramis]

An excellent example of an airport within a major city's limits is San Diego International Airport. [snip]

Another interesting airstrip, not a major airport by any stretch, is the airport on Adak Island, in Alaska. [snip]

So, yea, sometimes "stupidity" but also sometimes due to various other factors. In the case of San Diego, it was a case of the airport being built and the city growing up around it. I can see a Downport being built away from a metro area only to have the urbanized area to grow up around the 'port.

Merril Field, in Anchorage, sits in the space that used to be between the City of Mountain View and the City of Anchorage... before the two merged in the 60's. It's built on the original landfill for Anchorage. Merril Field runs 5th-15th, Orca to Bragaw, with cutouts for a fire station, two hospitals, a mental hospital, and a car dealership.

Old Anchorage (1950's - before Merril field was built and before Mountain View merged) runs from L to Orca (M, L, K, ... to C, B, A, Barrow, Cordova, Denali, ... Medfra, Nelchina, Orca as you head east from the water, alphabetical), and 1st to 15th. The original airstrip was C-K, 9th-10th, and the city grew past it. It's now a strip of parks (The "Park Strip"), but is still possessed of a sufficient length of open grass for a piper or cessna to make an emergency landing.

Anchorage's Ted Stevens International (PANC) is just outside some of the more expensive neighborhoods... but its a huge complex (bigger than old Anchorage was, tho not by much), and includes Lake Hood Airport (floatplanes) and a now closed AANG airbase facility, Fedex, UPS, KAL, JAL, and a couple other airline hub centers, and moves huge amounts of air cargo. When first built, it was well removed from people... but it grew rapidly.

There are two private runways in Anchorage - one's over 1800' (I've ridden along the sides on horseback). Plus two heliports (ANS Hospital, Providence Hospital).

I can see a major medical center having a couple landing pads for starships arriving with medical emergencies.

There are two private airports in neighborhoods in

 

[Lycanorukke]

I love that scene. One day I am going to see if I can actually read the instructions. So, yeah there for sure was a point of no return.

In the original book, the self destruct on the Nostromo was essentially shuitting down the the cooling system of the hyperdrive (aka blow the jump drive). Later on it appeared to become a countermeasure for corporate espionage.

As for the instructions, Read away...and it's 5 minute failsafe

 

[SpaceBadger]

Scariest airport in the midst of a city was Hong Kong; looking level out the window into apartment high rises bracketing the flight path.

I'll match you with a southern approach to Love Field in North Dallas. I'm not 100% certain that we ever actually flew between the skyscrapers of downtown, but especially on stormy nights it certainly looked that way to me.

Thanks for all the responses. I think I'm reading the general consensus that a well-designed fusion reactor in the far future should fail safe, and even deliberate action should not create a fusion BOOM like a thermonuclear bomb blast that destroys the whole starport, but could pretty much destroy or at least roast and radiate the ship.

Fission reactor... I think I'm gonna have to re-read that first response by aramis (I think?) but it sounds like even if it melts down that would be a bad day for the ship, but not a nuclear BOOM to destroy the starport.

Antimatter... well, maybe they don't allow antimatter reactors (if such even exist) to be landed on a planetary surface?

Somebody mentioned using the ship's L-Hyd fuel to make an explosion. I don't know the properties of gaseous hydrogen released into an oxygen atmosphere by breaching an L-Hyd tank - would it just burn or would it go BOOM like an FAE? If it would blow like an FAE, that sounds like it would be dangerous to ships and buildings nearby, as well as destroying the ship itself, right?

As for blowing the jump-drives, I think that unless there is canon to contradict me (and maybe even then) I am just going to say No.

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

Wow!

In the original book, the self destruct on the Nostromo was essentially shuitting down the the cooling system of the hyperdrive (aka blow the jump drive). Later on it appeared to become a countermeasure for corporate espionage.

As for the instructions, Read away...and it's 5 minute failsafe

Lycanorukke,

Damn that is sweet. Where'd ya get it? I mean I have an actual physical copy of the Book of ALIEN, but I don't recall that being in it. (Though it does have one of the coolest bridges ever and a cool autodoc pic.)

And thank you. I dig the alternate language instructions, though I can't say what they are. Spanish maybe? Some sort of romance language it appears. Either way, it is very cool. Also, Tesla Nucleare for the win!

Laterness,
Craig.

 

[Lycanorukke]

Damn that is sweet. Where'd ya get it? I mean I have an actual physical copy of the Book of ALIEN, but I don't recall that being in it.

Someone wanted to build a self destruct prop for some reason, and took HD screencaps of the scene in the movie (http://www.therpf.com/f9/building-nostromo-emergency-destruction-system-unit-lid-110943/).

And thank you. I dig the alternate language instructions, though I can't say what they are.

I think it's meant to be French, though the alternate language instructions are different in the movie (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1244235/Hos....Cut.1979.720p.DTheater.x264-hV[00-35-33].JPG) than in the made one (no Tesla Nuke in the original )

On edit: I also have to wonder what the button "Agaric Fly" does, or pressing the "Hum' and 'Padme' in sequence does.... (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1244235/Hos....Cut.1979.720p.DTheater.x264-hV[00-55-01].JPG)

 

[rancke]

And thank you. I dig the alternate language instructions, though I can't say what they are. Spanish maybe? Some sort of romance language it appears. Either way, it is very cool. Also, Tesla Nucleare for the win!

I think it's Italian.


Hans

 

[BytePro]

...Somebody mentioned using the ship's L-Hyd fuel to make an explosion. I don't know the properties of gaseous hydrogen released into an oxygen atmosphere by breaching an L-Hyd tank - would it just burn or would it go BOOM like an FAE? If it would blow like an FAE, that sounds like it would be dangerous to ships and buildings nearby, as well as destroying the ship itself, right?

Different than a FAE, I think, as it vaporizes quickly and the primary product of burning hydrogen in air is water. But still capable of doing a lot of blast damage. Reference the Fukushima reactor explosions. Not to mention Chernobyl. The visible 'explosion' of the Challenger Disaster is mostly hydrogen (and RCS gases, perhaps) - though the shuttle actually broke up and didn't itself 'explode'.

Hydrogen is very explosive - effective expansion (i.e. shock waves) - but also burns very fast. So the fireball is less spectacular than an FAE - and less prone to igniting as many materials and causing secondary blasts. However, that depends on the surrounding materials - ex: the Hindenburg, whose skin ignited and burned so dramatically and tragically (long after all the hydrogen gas was burned up).

 

[warwizard]

ok to make a fission reactor go boom surround (coating it) the pile with blocks of C4 have all the detonator wires the same exact length so the detonator in each block goes boom at the same time. pull out any control rods or drain the sodium or what have you, and set off your C4.
The open space in the core is collasped and inertia holds the nuclear material in place long enough for enough energy to be released in the fission reaction to vaporize the pile, in short a nuclear bomb. Pretty crude, and likley to be of a low grade as far as nuclear explosions go, but should be good enough to make the ship quite evidently destroyed. Rigging the fission reactor to detonate should require physical access to the core of the pile and about 10 hours to prepare and place the explosive, the the person doing the placing may not remain mobile long enough to complete the job. (needing several folks cooperating to emplace the charges)

The marines break down the doors to engineering and find several defenders in hard vacc suits curled up on the floor, dead or dying, a search of the compartment finds a bundle of wires rigged to a common switch, a simple knife blade switch rigged to be operated by hand. The searchers follow the wires: they lead deep into the core of the reactor, they can barely make out a single figure in a hard suit within the blue glow of the reactor which dimminishes as a last panel is placed into position around the reactor core. The figure turns and looks at the doorway and locks eyes with the marine standing there, and slumps, retches, straightens back up and walks unstedilly to the door, her mission a failure, her life and thoes of her companions given in failure.

 

[aramis]

ok to make a fission reactor go boom surround (coating it) the pile with blocks of C4 have all the detonator wires the same exact length so the detonator in each block goes boom at the same time. pull out any control rods or drain the sodium or what have you, and set off your C4.

You do NOT drain the sodium. A sodium moderated reactor only reacts when the sodium is PRESENT.

 

[Timerover51]

ok to make a fission reactor go boom surround (coating it) the pile with blocks of C4 have all the detonator wires the same exact length so the detonator in each block goes boom at the same time. pull out any control rods or drain the sodium or what have you, and set off your C4. The open space in the core is collasped and inertia holds the nuclear material in place long enough for enough energy to be released in the fission reaction to vaporize the pile, in short a nuclear bomb. Pretty crude, and likley to be of a low grade as far as nuclear explosions go, but should be good enough to make the ship quite evidently destroyed. Rigging the fission reactor to detonate should require physical access to the core of the pile and about 10 hours to prepare and place the explosive, the the person doing the placing may not remain mobile long enough to complete the job. (needing several folks cooperating to emplace the charges)

Hmmm, do you have any idea on how much shielding is around the average submarine fission reactor? Fat Man used a couple of thousand pounds of Comp B, a mixture of TNT and RDX, to achieve fission with Pu-239. That did include using blocks of Barite explosive in order to achieve a spherical compression wave. As for pulling the control rods, once you do that, the reactor starts a melt down. Survivability of men in the immediate vicinity, regardless of shielding is going to be measured in minutes, not hours.

I am assuming that for any use by spaceships or starships of fission reactors is going to come with very stringent standards on shielding and operating controls.

Edit Note: How many tons of C-4 or the equivalent are you planning to use on this attempt? And I am not kidding about the "tons".

 

[Carlobrand]

ok to make a fission reactor go boom surround (coating it) the pile with blocks of C4 have all the detonator wires the same exact length so the detonator in each block goes boom at the same time. pull out any control rods or drain the sodium or what have you, and set off your C4.
The open space in the core is collasped and inertia holds the nuclear material in place long enough for enough energy to be released in the fission reaction to vaporize the pile, in short a nuclear bomb. ...[/I]

I don't think that would work, at least not in terms of generating a nuclear blast. You're still dealing with a much lower grade of uranium in a reactor than you'd find in a bomb, way too much U-238 and not enough U-235 to go boom. Then too - unless the structure surrounding the nuclear material was constructed specifically with the idea of focusing such a blast - the structure itself will interfere with the compression wave created by the C4 as it collapses under the blast. Best you're getting out of that is a conventional HE blast that scatters the radioactive material all over the place - basically a dirty bomb.

If you want a spectacular self-destruct, then activate the jump drive while on the ground or within 10 diameters of a planet. I don't think it's anywhere near nuclear-bomb level, but it's got to rank as one of the more interesting things to see happening - from a safe distance, of course.

 

[warwizard]

it's going to have all the rods crushed together by the explosion, drained the sodium so I can do that. (Added bonus my scuttling crew lives longer in the hot zone if there is less radiation being produced)

The Gun type atomic bomb fired a sub crit chunk to fit into a hole in another subcrit chunk to make the thing go super crit. The implosion bomb has a sphere of material which in that geometry is sub crit, get imploded into a super crit mass by a concentric explosion... that's what I'm doing to your sodium reactor, physically mangling it in a controlled manner to make it go super crit.

The gun type cannot be scaled you are limited to critical value between 1 and a bit less than 2. The imploson type can be scaled just make the sphere bigger

 

[aramis]

it's going to have all the rods crushed together by the explosion, drained the sodium so I can do that. (Added bonus my scuttling crew lives longer in the hot zone if there is less radiation being produced)

If your reactor uses sodium, you can't hit critical density at all, even by crushing the rods together. That's why sodium moderated reactors are being proposed for civil use - they literally fail safely. Boil the sodium, and it's a radiation source, nothing else.

unlike the neutron absorption rod designs, where pull the rods, and it melts down.

 

[warwizard]

Ahh yes, the material not being of the type needed might foil my attempt.

The large ammounts of U235... does it have critical mass, does a solid block of the stuff a meter in diameter qualify? I was thinking that we have tons of fuel rods/pellets in a large ship reactor, smash them all in fast enough and perhaps get a low order fission boom, and certiantly a dirty bomb. Want to keep the enemy from using the ship of learning your secrets... the nuclear missiles aboard would be a better and faster way, single missile and one block of C4 on the side, boom and you set off the warhead's compression explosive but not in the concentric manner so no nuclear boom yield but plenty of radioactive materials scattered

That's what you get when you do not have a nuclear engineer trying to do the boom thing. I was thinking several tons of the stuff would be needed, and several tons of boom stuff should scuttle a ship pretty good all by itself.

All you need to do is put enough boom stuff next to it to breech the containment and destroy the piping for the coolant systems and that ship's not going to be self powered any more.

 

[Timerover51]

Ahh yes, the material not being of the type needed might foil my attempt.

The large ammounts of U235... does it have critical mass, does a solid block of the stuff a meter in diameter qualify? I was thinking that we have tons of fuel rods/pellets in a large ship reactor, smash them all in fast enough and perhaps get a low order fission boom, and certiantly a dirty bomb. Want to keep the enemy from using the ship of learning your secrets... the nuclear missiles aboard would be a better and faster way, single missile and one block of C4 on the side, boom and you set off the warhead's compression explosive but not in the concentric manner so no nuclear boom yield but plenty of radioactive materials scattered

You might get some Pu-239 or U-235 scattered around. The Pu-239 would be somewhat of a problem as it is a bone seeker, but getting a lot spread around, not that much. You have a reflector, typically beryllium surrounding the sub-critical masses as well. How much nuclear material do you think is in a kiloton or so yield warhead? You are looking at a few pounds.

That's what you get when you do not have a nuclear engineer trying to do the boom thing. I was thinking several tons of the stuff would be needed, and several tons of boom stuff should scuttle a ship pretty good all by itself.

All you need to do is put enough boom stuff next to it to breech the containment and destroy the piping for the coolant systems and that ship's not going to be self powered any more.

Given the TONS of what you call "boom stuff" you would need to breach any reactor containment vessel, that would be better used wrecking the rest of the ship, assuming that you are carrying TONS of demolition material.

 

[Lycanorukke]

Instead of playing around with the material in the reactor (which won't go bang for the various reasons mentioned), play around with the sodium coolant instead.

Water from your tanks added to a system full of super hot liquid sodium....

 

[BytePro]

Yeah - its the secondary elements that cause an explosion.

Sodium already has a record of causing fires just from moisture and O2 in the air - see Monju (sp?) plant in Japan. (And the 1950's reactor experiment near LA had a partial meltdown, though not directly due to the sodium, IIRC.) Not sure liquid sodium would be very effective in terms of exploding directly (not even so much as solid sodium), however, it will create hydrogen gas and heat when it reacts with water...

Reactors can make the fuel for a bomb and burn such fuel in insufficient amounts (breeders), but turning the reactor into a bomb is extremely unrealistic. Its meltdowns and secondary (hydrogen gas/steam) explosions with the resulting release of radiation that are the concern. This is not to say that a fictional reactor couldn't have this property (however silly that may be).

 

[Carlobrand]

Ahh yes, the material not being of the type needed might foil my attempt.

The large ammounts of U235... does it have critical mass, does a solid block of the stuff a meter in diameter qualify? I was thinking that we have tons of fuel rods/pellets in a large ship reactor, smash them all in fast enough and perhaps get a low order fission boom, and certiantly a dirty bomb.

Typically, naturaly uranium is over 99% U-238, with only a fraction of it being the useful (for this purpose) U-235 isotope. U-238 tends to swallow neutrons and convert to another element rather than fissioning and spewing out more neutrons when hit by a neutron, which means it tends to smother a chain reaction. Reactor-grade uranium, it varies with the specifics of the reactor: the uranium is enriched to anything from 3% in most commercial reactors to almost 20% in some research reactors. By comparison, the bomb dropped over Hiroshima was 80% U-235.

If I understand correctly, you can get down to 20% enrichment - 20% U-235 amongst 80% U-238 - and achieve a very crude, very low yield fission bomb like the one you're discussing, but there are tricks you'd have to use to make sure there were adequate fast neutrons to maintain the chain reaction, and those tricks wouldn't be available in the kind of improvised destruction of a fission plant that you're contemplating.

Want to keep the enemy from using the ship of learning your secrets... the nuclear missiles aboard would be a better and faster way, single missile and one block of C4 on the side, boom and you set off the warhead's compression explosive but not in the concentric manner so no nuclear boom yield but plenty of radioactive materials scattered ...

If you've got nuclear missiles in your ship and the codes to detonate them, then just detonate them in the ship on a time delay. You control the bomb: if your government wants you to have that capability, then you have that capability, and a nuke going off inside a ship's pretty well going to vaporize everything inside the ship and shove the hull apart in the process.

If you don't have a nuke handy and intend to deny the enemy your ship, and don't happen to be in a gravity well or don't have fuel to (mis)jump in that gravity well, then keep thermite charges around your computer's memory core. Set your fusion plant to turn off the magnetic-or-whatever bottle containing the fusion reaction while the plant is running - the fused plasma contained at the instant of the bottle failure will expand out, encounter the machinery of the power plant, and promptly vaporize or liquify some of that until its energy is expended. No spectacular boom, but the enemy will recover a scuttled ship with no means of drawing data from the computer, indeed no functioning computer, and with a thoroughly wrecked power plant.

 

[warwizard]

In case a nuclear explosion was not desired, just the destruction of the warheads prior to capture. The rest of the warheads should likley also detonate their explosives, A warship with a magazine full of nukes has a fairly reliable manner of scuttling even if for some reason the nuclear explosion is not desired.