Reply To: Fusion Oil

[Impaler]

Well if you took the cycle time way down you might be able to largely eliminate the cooling system a normal system would need and just make due with passive air cooling. The power to weight ratio would be terrible and the instillation cost would still be quite high but that’s about the only way I can see the system being miniaturized. Radiation shielding is by far the biggest barrier to miniaturization, the reactor is producing weak Neutrons and X-Rays and even Radiation shielding is based on thickness so even a low cycling low powered system needs the same shielding as a normal system. It could NEVER go in something the size of a car or truck as even a reactor the size of a breadbox would need more then a ton of water around it based on the 1 meter of water and an inch of lead figure that Eric has sited.

About the only vehicle application I can see being viable would be a locomotive (typical diesel locomotive is 5MW electric output) and even that would require some work as a trains width is constrained such that after the shielding you have only about a meter across for the reactor to fit in, that might very well be too small but it’s in the realm of possibility.