EVE General Discussion

Hmm... from what I recall from my nuclear days, you use convection to transfer the heat from the primary to the secondary, with the coolant in the secondary being converted to steam and used kinetically to provide work. The coolant in the secondary is then cooled to cycle back through the heat exchange with the primary.

So the question is, how would you take the heat extracted from the secondary and convert that to a form that can be efficiently radiated into the vacuum of space?

expose the core to space
lol

Knock yourself out (or, more specifically, this).

It's a fun site overall, in spite of its geocities styling, so it's worth a look.

You should be able to radiate heat though space fine. That's how the heat from the sun gets to the planet from the sun. The heat from fission reactors has to go somewhere, hense minmatar ships have radiators, only they are unlike house "radiators" as they are designed to convect heat not radiate it. Technically anything dark, hot and has lots of surface area should radiate heat as IR fine, no matter if there is a vaccuum.

The heat from the fission reactor needs to be first converted to work, otherwise what's the point of having the reactor in the first place. So, you have a primary coolant system, fully shielded, where the core resides. This uses convection (liquid) to transfer the heat through a heat exchanger to a secondary system (a separate shielded chamber outside the primary), where the secondary coolant, now converted to steam, is used to drive turbines, etc. Some heat is lost in the transfer of energy to kinetic, but a lot remains in the secondary coolant. This is what needs to be dealt with.

The problem with radiators, like that article Tippia pointed out states, is that all you have to do to effectively kill the ship is shoot the radiators. If you remove the ability of the ship to lose the heat, well... it's either scram the reactor or wish you did before you died.

Are you like a lawyer or something?

there are zero particles in a vacuum, hence zero ways to radiate heat. space does have some particles in it, but they are so few and far between that it would be meaningless. heat is vibrating particles. they aren't part of a radiator system. they are either solar panels, heat *gatherers* (absorbing sunlight), or just there for the same reason everything in EVE looks the way it does - because an artist thought they looked cool.

You need to reveal this useful secret to the aerospace industry as they've been building spacecraft with them useless radiators all this time. That thar's some serious weight saving idea you got.

Because to have a radiator hanging off your suit (and pointed in the correct direction) would present some serious issues during a typical EVA.

Indeed.

As an early pre-EvE technology example just take a look at the wingy bits on ISS.

There's 2 types of them, one set is generating energy, the other set is radiating excess heat.