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From: mchamp@wpi.wpi.edu (Marc J. Champagne)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Cold Fusion
Message-ID: <5326@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 3 Apr 89 05:23:27 GMT
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From: mchamp@wpi.wpi.edu (Marc J. Champagne)

To: maniac%garnet.Berkeley.EDU@
In response to your article:

1) yes, fission plants will probably be more weight and size efficient
      ; that's why I recommended them for cruisers and carriers ; you
      only want the fusion plant because it eliminates the need to
      depend upon potentially difficult to supply enriched uranium and
      oil ; if you only have a few large surface ships using fission
      power, you have no uranium supply problem.....so stick with
      fission for CVNs and CGNs.  Fusion is the obvious choice for the
     more numerous classes of surface ships (DDs/FFs), though.

2) "running destroyer prices up to the CVN range".....a gross
      exageration ; you can go with a modification on current tubine
      designs for gas turbine engines, only you're using fussion
      released energy as your heat source instead of gas combustion ;
      and the devices which have seen experimentation so far involve
      platinum group metals (fairly expensive, but a 1 time purchase
      per power plant....they're not consumed) and deuterium (which is
      being cheaply extracted from sea-water and refined to greater
      than 98% by the Canadians).  Of course, having backup diesel
      generators would up the price a bit.  But that seems to be an
      inevitability if you're faced with a 10 hour charge time to
       saturate your palladium with deuterium.

    The whole point is that you have a slightly higher initial outlay,
      but then don't have the logistics difficulties of supplying
      large amounts of fossil fuels.  We probably would have seen
      destroyer's with fission power plants years ago in spite of the
      higher initial cost if supplying that much more enriched uranium
      for naval power plants hadn't seemed to be such a problem.
      Basically, it's a case of the Navy having to look at it's
      uranium needs and assigning some sort of priority.  SSNs, CVNs,
      and CGNs were judged to have greater importance (in that order).


As for use aboard subs, I do not think that that would be a safe
   course of action.  Again, if a fusion plant using the principles in
   the Utah project is powered down, the deuterium ions fly out of the
   lattice structure in the palladium.  Then you're without your main
   propulsion system for 10 hours or so while you try to resaturate it.


Can anyone see any practical applications aside from destroyer and
   frigate power plants?

[mod.note:  Is it not possible to operate the fusion plant at "maintanence
level", keeping the bulk of the deuterium in the palladium without
reaching "critical mass" (or whatever the appropriate term in
this technology) ?   Or perhaps one could remove part of the palladium
from the "core" ?  If the plant can only be operated in an "on/off" mode,
with 10 hours to turn it on, its uses will be greatly diminished. - Bill ]