Nuclear Dampers as offensive weapons and in manufacturing

[Jeff M. Hopper]

Another thread has got me thinking about nuclear damper technology applications.

It has already been established that a nuclear damper can reduce the effects of radioactivity in an area, but according to Book 4 Mercenary, a nuclear damper can either increase or decrease the stability of atomic nuclei, so can a nuclear damper then be used to increase the amount of radioactivity in an area? It would seem so. How would this affect the realm of area denial weapons? Would this become the new version of "salting of the Earth" as fleets who are retreating from worlds use their dampers to cause large tracts of farmlands or civilian urbanities to become radioactively contaminated so that the enemy could not use them? Would this be a weapon of choice for Virus in TNE to scour a world free of life?

How does this effect manufacturing? If you only have a limited supply of an element, could you find an abundant element close to the one you don't have on a chart of nuclides and then use a series of nuclear dampers to "cook" it until you have the element that you need? How would this effect economies? Shortfalls of strategic materials becomes more of a question of time and energy now for resource availability.

Jeez, why didn't I think of this crap before...

 

[mike wightman]

Both seem like very reasonable ideas to me, logical extensions of the technology.

They can't be allowed to work in this way of course...

you'd have replicators next

 

[mike wightman]

Oh, and in the past they have also been offered as the explanation as to how fusion reactors become smaller and more efficient at thigher TLs.

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by Jeff M. Hopper:
It has already been established that a nuclear damper can reduce the effects of radioactivity in an area, but according to Book 4 Mercenary, a nuclear damper can either increase or decrease the stability of atomic nuclei...

Jeff,

That's not an additional effect. Increasing or decreasing the stability of nucleii is how a nuclear damper controls radioactivity.

Radioactivity occurs when a nucleus either 'decays' or is split (fission). In both cases the nucleus gives off various particles that are all lumped under the label 'radioactivity'.

A damper limits or prevents radioactivity by limiting or preventing fission and/or decay. If radioactivity is already present, a damper has no effect.

... so can a nuclear damper then be used to increase the amount of radioactivity in an area?

Yes, by goosing along what would be natural decay and/or fission rates for unstable nucleii. Please note the term unstable.

This is also how dampers can be used to 'clean up' radiologically contaminated areas. Instead of waiting for enough natural half-lives to pass, the damper accelerate the process.

How would this affect the realm of area denial weapons? Would this become the new version of "salting of the Earth" as fleets who are retreating from worlds use their dampers to cause large tracts of farmlands or civilian urbanities to become radioactively contaminated so that the enemy could not use them? Would this be a weapon of choice for Virus in TNE to scour a world free of life?

Not exactly, and not in the way you envision it.

First, the canonical damper is not a distintegrator. That technology comes about at TL16+.

Second, the damper prevents, limits, or speeds up the decay or fission of unstable nucleii. Unless there's stuff like thorium in the soil, you aren't going to get anywhere by 'goosing' the atoms in the soil to decay. Mainly because the atoms in the soil don't normally decay! Remember, the damper merely halts or helps what was going to happen anyway.

Google 'the curve of binding energy'.

How does this effect manufacturing? If you only have a limited supply of an element, could you find an abundant element close to the one you don't have on a chart of nuclides and then use a series of nuclear dampers to "cook" it until you have the element that you need?

It depends on where the element falls on the curve of binding energy. If it is 'above' or 'to the right' of iron (roughly), you will be able to 'cook' an element 'down' or 'to the left' on the curve to another element. You'll have to deal with the resultant radiation however. Remember, the damper doesn't make radiation go away, in it's 'slow or prevent' mode it simply halts the process that creates radiation. In it's 'speed up mode it actually assists the process that makes radiation!

How would this effect economies? Shortfalls of strategic materials becomes more of a question of time and energy now for resource availability.

Cooking one element down the courve of binding energy is going to be dangerous due to the radiation created. We also don't know enough about the damper to know if using it is economical. We do know it prevents nukes from going off by preventing fission and we know it can 'cook off' nukes by allowing enough fission for them to 'sizzle' without exploding. However, we don't know how big a volume a damper set-up effects and we don't know how fast it can make things 'sizzle'. Importantly, we don't know how much energy a damper requires apart from the military i]Striker[/i] and LBB5 uses which are very different from the industrial uses you propose.

Is it feasible? Yes. Is it economic? Well, mining and refining of radioactive elements still occurs in the 57th Century and they're a pricey item on any version's trade table.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[Jeff M. Hopper]

Thanks, Bill. I'd forgotten about the binding energy curve. I can never say that I have many of the answers, but I try to come up with thought-provoking questions.

I guess the next question would be, how difficult is it going to be for a nuclear damper system to destabilize an already stable element (which would bring it into the realm of the TL 16+ disintegrator)(Hmmm, this is beginning to look like the relationship between contragravity for air/rafts and thruster plates for starships). There's a lot here that will end being the realm of the individual referee's taste, I'm sure. I'm trying to explore the range of possibilities with this idea.

 

[veltyen]

Unless there's stuff like thorium in the soil

... or Carbon 13.

I assumed a nuclear damper only affected decay rates. Therefore it would stop a cascade from starting, but not nessersarily from an already started reaction.

In a fission explosion you need material that naturally decays fast enough to trigger enough splitting to cause a chain reaction. If you can damp the initial decay then the device won't trigger, if it has been triggered and still requires the statistical input of the decaying matter then a nuclear damper would slow or stop a chain reaction.

Currently nearly all [1] decay rates are something that we cannot affect. Hence the reason that you can use carbon dating (the theory, the fact that carbon dating can be wildly variable I don't want to discuss). Everything decays at a rate that is fairly easy to measure. What can be changed is collision events, by putting particle sources (such as rapidly decaying material) you can raise the likelyhood that the particles hit another atom fast enough to split it.

If nuclear dampers work in reverse you could then turn any tightly packed even passably emitive material into a fission chain reaction. That assumes however that the dampers can be infinitely strong. Most nuclear devices are fairly finely tuned, they need to be otherwise they would occasionally detonate accidently, meaning a very small change in decay rates (one way or the other) could stop them triggering.

A small change in decay rates, just enough to throw off sensitive chain reactions, won't be able to lay waste to continents.


[1] I thought this was all. However a small group of materials under certain thermal conditions can have their decay rate changed. Maybe that's the loophole that nuke dampers work on.

 

[TheDS]

I never thought of it this way before reading Bill's post (or if I did, I forgot), but I don't see why you couldn't consider Traveller Disintegrators to be an offshoot of Damper technology, in the same way that the original Thruster plate was considered an offshoot of Antigravity tech.

 

[mike wightman]

Emm, it specifically states in LBB4 Mercenary that disintegators are a TL16 development of nuclear damper technology

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by Jeff M. Hopper:
Thanks, Bill. I'd forgotten about the binding energy curve. I can never say that I have many of the answers, but I try to come up with thought-provoking questions.

Jeff,

It certainly was a thought provoking question!

I guess the next question would be, how difficult is it going to be for a nuclear damper system to destabilize an already stable element (which would bring it into the realm of the TL 16+ disintegrator)

Well, you asked a question and answered it in the same sentence! As LBB4 tells us, TL13 thru TL15 damper technology points the way to TL16+ disintergrator technology. What the change is and what is required we don't know. I always thought of the two as being related in the same fashion the telegraph and radio are.

The difference between the two is quite simple to to remember:

- The damper slows down or speeds up what is going to happen anyway.
- The disintegrator does what shouldn't happen at all.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by veltyen:
I assumed a nuclear damper only affected decay rates. Therefore it would stop a cascade from starting, but not nessersarily from an already started reaction.

Veltyen,

Yup, that's the 'slow down' part...

If nuclear dampers work in reverse you could then turn any tightly packed even passably emitive material into a fission chain reaction. That assumes however that the dampers can be infinitely strong. Most nuclear devices are fairly finely tuned, they need to be otherwise they would occasionally detonate accidently, meaning a very small change in decay rates (one way or the other) could stop them triggering.

... and that's the part we don't understand very well. Canon has dampers delaying or slowing reactions and canon also has dampers speeding reactions up. Dampers can either 'damp' a warhead or tweak it just enough so that it 'fizzles'; i.e make decay cascades occur at a faster than normal rate but below that rate required for sustained fission.

Is that possible? I dunno. It's the same with anit-gravity. But the fizzle setting is the one supposedly used to clean up contaminated regions.

A small change in decay rates, just enough to throw off sensitive chain reactions, won't be able to lay waste to continents.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[J.C.D.]

Well, nuclear dampers ARE a sort of offensive technology if one side has them and the other doesn't. Say, god forbid, that the sovs had developed them in, say, the early 80's.

So they have 'nuclear sheilds' that protect their lands, at which point they could dictate terms to the rest of the world and launch nuke strikes without fear of retaliation.

They'd be offensive if they allow one side in a war ro use nukes without fear of retaliation.

I remember a short Sf story from years agom can't recall the title, about a pair of scientists who accidentially invent a global nuclear damper that makes all nuclear weapons on earth useless. A CIA guy tracks them down and tries to convince them it's a bad idea because without nuclear weapons, conventional war will become a daily fact of life between the superpowers, the scientists refuse, claiming it's better than the possibility of all out nuclear war.

The device can't be 'scaled down' to only affect part of the world either, and the scientists refuse to even consider trying, claiming they want no one to have a nuclear monopoly.

So the secret agent murders them both and destroyes all evidence of the device. It was to maintain MAD and the peace it brought.

I think it was done by Baen books, if you're interested in nuclear dampers and their ramifications I hope you can find it, wish I could recall the title, it was a short story.

In one of Asimov's 'robots' novels, it was Robots and Empie, I believe, there was a device that could accelerate nuclear decay and increase radioactivity. The novel had some interesting uses for such a thing, if you're interested in a device that could increase nuclear decay and radiation.

 

[veltyen]

So they have 'nuclear sheilds' that protect their lands, at which point they could dictate terms to the rest of the world and launch nuke strikes without fear of retaliation.

*cough* Son of Star Wars *cough*