Chronicles of Sol: The Fall-Chapter 249 Two Hundred Seven Plasma Fusion

Vera walked into the reactor room, her gaze quickly falling on the active reactor. It was huge, taking up much of the room it was in, for a moment she thought it was completely open to the room, but then she noticed the barrier between the monitoring area and the reactor. The reactor itself was clearly a plasma reactor, the glowing sphere of superheated plasma just floating between a pair of massive domes tapering into a cone shape gave it away. The floating ring oriented horizontally around the reaction was unique, but what Vera really noted was the apparent lack of a containment field.

Frowning, she turned to Richards by the local monitoring console, "So, um, how is this thing contained?"

"Modern plasma fusion is the result of decades of artificial gravity, inside that sphere we are using intense gravity fields to compress superheated deuterium plasma to the point that a fusion reaction happens. The same process also serves to largely contain the plasma reaction, but occasionally a prominence does occur, that ring you see is designed to attract, collect and then convert those reactions into usable energy."

"I see, so why did you call me down?"

"Right now, we use dual-phase fusion, the plasma reaction is computer-controlled and monitored. The initial plasma infusion is pure deuterium, over time that is converted into Helium-3 which in turn undergoes a secondary fusion reaction once the deuterium is used up. I'm sure you are familiar with all the reactions that can happen, but suffice to say the reactor is done once all the fuel has been converted to Helium-4. What we need to do is modify the reactor to produce heavier elements, our carbon mining lately has been too low for industrial demand."

"Ah! I understand, and you want my input on something?"

"Yes I was thinking about improving the containment systems, right now we use electromagnets and artificial gravity fields to contain the plasma. I'm thinking we should also surround the reactor with local force fields."

"That is something I can easily help with, and I do know a few things about fusion reactions. Not that well versed on plasma reactors though, the confederation uses a very different set up." She took another look, "What's the energy efficiency on this thing?"

"We use Rydium-based energy conversion, we convert 98% of produced energy into usable power."

She whistled, "That is a good deal better than Confederation reactors, the best ones are only 85% effective. Sadly the military usually gets screwed over, and ends up with older less effective models."

"It was the opposite with us," replied Richards, "Eight years ago this was top-of-the-line Earth Federation technology, there wasn't a better reactor on the market, hell the civilian models could barely do 90. Now you and I are going to make this better. Well you, me, and those scientists over there."

She looked over at the men and women on the other monitor, chatting amicably.

"So who are they?"

"Some of the ship's foremost experts on fusion. The rest are in lab 82, working on simulated designs."

"Understood, and what are we doing?"

"Shutting reactors five and six down, so that we can work on them. I've already started the process, new fuel input has been brought down to zero, the computer is now adjusting pressure and temperatures to throttle the reaction. Without that the reactor will keep going for another six hours, just on the fuel already in there."

Vera blinked, "That's going to take a while then."

"That's the nice thing about fusion reactions, most of the cost is getting them started, once they are going they keep going." She sighed, "Of course, now we want to get carbon out as our main byproduct, so we are going to have to make some changes. That's also going to throw a lot of figures off in terms of power production."

"I'm aware, but it's still going to be positive."

"More or less, yes, just not as positive as we are used to. Thankfully we aren't using the reactors as heavily as we used to, or we might have an issue."

Vera nodded, and then looked over the console, "So, um, what is this?"

"Throttle controls, we use those to control the fusion rate. When we don't need the reactor, we throttle it down to standby. That's where the reactor is still consuming fuel, but only enough to sustain the reaction. That way we can rapidly throttle it back up when we happen to need it. Back in normal space, we only tax the reactors to about ten percent capacity for normal operation, but even at a hundred percent we fall short for the warp drive, for that we need the antimatter reactor."

"You know, now that you mention it, I've never seen your antimatter reactor either. Where is it even at?"

"Recall the superstructure towards the rear of the ship? Climb to the top of that, and enter the secondary hull. It runs through the entire core of that section, and produces the same output as all eight of our fusion reactors. I can show you."

"I'd like to see it."

The trip through the ship didn't take that long thanks to the lifts and before Vera knew it she was following Richards into Warp Engineering. "Hmm, why is this called Warp Engineering?"

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"The second engine room exists almost entirely for monitoring and controlling the warp engines, which is why there aren't that many people here."

Vera looked around the room, consoles were banked against every wall, facing numerous monitors but only a third of the stations were actually manned. "I can see that."

Richards pointed out some machinery at the back of the room. "That over there is the forward edge of the reactor, normally it would glow but we aren't actually using it at the moment."

She took a look, it was a lot of machinery forming an M shape, a soft one, with three trapezoidal viewing ports at the top of each edge. The module was as Richards stated, dark. "So what method do you use for antimatter?"

"The reactor is called a dual-core reactor since it has two reaction chambers. Electromagnetic and artificial gravity fields are used to contain and channel the reaction, while a series of Rydium Energy converters turn the energy into usable power. Power is generated in two stages, the first stage is the annihilation chamber where a particle stream of hydrogen comes into contact with an antihydrogen particle stream. The resulting energy blast is refracted and focused into the second stage chamber where it manifests as a highly energetic column of contained light. It is here in the second stage that the reaction is converted by the series of convertors I mentioned into usable energy."

"Am I to understand you have two concurrent annihilation reactions in the same reactor?

"That would be correct."

"How much energy is actually harvested?"

"There is still some room for improvement, but this reactor is rated for 95% efficiency."

"Sounds comparable to Confederation designs, although the approach is different. I can get you some notes on what they do. But more importantly, since I'm designing reactor shielding for the fusion generators, I can design something for the Antimatter one as well. I just need the design specs for this reactor."

"I can show you those right over here," said Richards as she pulled her over to one of the monitoring stations.

The other girl quickly manipulated the display and brought up the reactor schematics and design specifications. Vera leaned in and looked them over, "Wait? Am I reading this right? Is the reactor hard capped at forty percent capacity?"

Richards nodded, "We had issues with core stability when exceeding 40%, that is one of the reasons we went with a dual chamber setup. Since we left Earth, the reactor has never exceeded that hard cap for safety reasons."

"So the reactor can theoretically burn more fuel than it does, but can't due to safety reasons," commented Vera thinking, "Hmm, I think I could fix that, looks like the core shielding is based on electromagnetic repulsor fields and polarized structural fields. By integrating high-power triphasic force shields, I should be able to increase the tolerances. We'd just need to test it somewhere."

Richards grinned, "I've got a few ideas for that, and I look forward to what you can do. If you could find just five percent, that would be huge."

Vera didn't reply, but she knew what Richards meant. 40% was equal to the full capacity of eight fusion generators, another five percent on top of that would be like adding another reactor. She blinked as she realized the Enterprise technically had the equal of twenty fusion generators right here. They just had to figure out how to tap it. Then another thought occurred to her, "Can we even use that capacity?"

"Oh we can use it, although not all of the theoretical capacity..." then Richards frowned, "Then again, maybe the warp engines could?" She shook her head, "Nah, that's silly, they'd rip themselves apart."

"Well I can't say I am surprised, starships are often built with capacity for improvements." 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

"That they are, part of the extra capacity was for that, even if we can't use all of it now, doesn't mean anything for the future."

"So it does, but the amount of unused capacity... it's just absurd."

Richards giggled, "Well, we never did iron out the core breach problem, so we just decided 40% was good enough and left it at that." She turned more serious, "But I imagine that if we still had Earth and the high energy labs back there, we very well would have solved it by now."

"What about the Fusion generators? Is there any unused capacity there? " Vera inquired, trying to get a sense of both projects.

Richards turned back with a grin, "Sure is, but by design. The Fusion generators were designed so that additional reaction cores could be added to each generator module as ship power needs increased."

"So we could double the power of the fusion generators?"

"More." Stated a familiar male voice, "some crazy admiral had some unrealistic ideas for the Enterprise."

She turned, "Captain!? What are you doing here?"

"Some bird told me you were here, had something I wanted to discuss as well."

Vera frowned, "So, um, how much more power could we add?"

"The Enterprise has the capacity for three fusion cores per generator module," commented Countryman. "But that kind of power generation was only useful for one thing."

Richards sighed, "I'd always wondered, so someone wanted to put one of those on the Enterprise? Isn't she a little small for it?"

Vera blinked, "Small for what!?"

Countryman sighed, "The

XXDP-23 Particle Lance Cannon, it's a spinal mounted weapon that was originally employed on the EFS Yamato. It's a very high-yield focused particle beam weapon with a destructive output in the mid-gigaton range. A smaller version designated XXDP-25B was briefly proposed for mounting on the Enterprise. To accommodate it, the Enterprise was going to mount eight dual-core fusion generators. It was dropped, but the power capacity for the beam weapon was pretty much left in place. Although the extra cores were later transferred to another ship, to speed up production timetables."

"Curious, am I to understand that part of this weapon might be onboard?"

"Part yes, after the requirement for it was dropped, I repurposed what components were installed. The capacitor arrays were linked to the main beam arrays, adding extra charge capacity. By this point if we wanted one, we'd have to basically build it from scratch. Not that we need a lance, and it wasn't something I wanted to talk about."

"Right, what project do you have in mind?"

Countryman opened his mouth, only for the deckplates to rock under their feet. Several alarms went off all at once. Then the ship rocked again. What the fuck was going on?"