Warp Core shutdown/ejection procedure compared to SCRAM?

ryan218

Okay, so something that just occurred to me is that in Star Trek: Voyager there's an episode where Chakotay is disembodied or something and uses B'Elanna to shut down or eject the core, leading to Janeway concluding what had happened since shutting down the core apparently required command authority (CO or XO).

Now, this seems pretty risky to me, given it abstracts a potentially vital safety decision to an individual/s who lacks the contextual understanding of the situation 'on the ground' so-to-speak. The closest real-world analogy I could think of would be SCRAMing a nuclear reactor on a warship like the US or French Supercarriers or a nuclear submarine. Given there are people here whom I know for a fact are better-informed on this subject than I am; assuming it's not classified, who does final responsibility for SCRAMing a naval reactor fall to? Does the Engineering Officer need command approval to SCRAM, or is it a case of 'better to beg forgiveness than ask permission'?

jonsills

SCRAMming the reactor is the decision of the reactor operator and no one else. For starters, if the reaction's going over the top enough to require a SCRAM, there's no time to go consulting anybody.

SCRAMmigs will also happen automatically if power is interrupted to the rod-control mechanism; the device is designed to hold the control rods out of the reactor chamber, not to push them in. (The original design built at the University of Chicago had the rods held out by a rope, with a man standing by with a fire axe to chop through the rope if there were an emergency. This is the source of the acronym SCRAM, which stood for "Safety Control Rod Axe Man", because even nuclear physicists feel a bit puckish from time to time.)

spiritborn

I while I can't be 100% on this (since a) Finland has no nuclear vessels and b)I was stationed in the logistics of surface base anyway) I think this would be one of those cases where military follows civilian safety standards (or has their own even more strict standards), seeing as with a reactor meltdown bad enough to need a SCRAM you don't really have time to consult anyone. It should be noted that not even military reactors can create a nuclear explotion, though that doesn't mean "bad things (tm)" won't happen with a simple meltdown.

Having a CO have the final say makes even less sense on a warpcore since unlike fission fuel that's mostly harmless ( U-235 is very midly radioactive and U-238 that makes up the majority of the Uranium in the fuel is so mildly radioactive as to be almost non-radioactive) if taken out of the reactor and handled like the highly toxic material it is, anti-matter cannot literally exist in the same space as regular matter.

Now I could understand that ejecting the core if the sensors say "no danger" would be something only the CO(or XO) can do, but if the reactor monitoring system says "core breach unavoidable" the ejection system should jettison the core automatically unless told to do otherwise (like for example if the self-destruct system is engaged).

legendarylycan

antimatter absolutely CAN exist in the same space as normal matter - as long as whatever form of antimatter it is doesn't contact its polar opposite; particles only annihilate when they come in contact with THEIR specific opposites, not with others

at least according to the layman's explanation of antimatter - i'm not a particle physicist, so i can't personally confirm that​​

ryan218

Thanks guys. I figured that would be the case, which makes Voyager's statement all the more odd.

qultuq

shadowfang240 wrote: »

antimatter absolutely CAN exist in the same space as normal matter - as long as whatever form of antimatter it is doesn't contact its polar opposite; particles only annihilate when they come in contact with THEIR specific opposites, not with others

at least according to the layman's explanation of antimatter - i'm not a particle physicist, so i can't personally confirm that​​

Well yeah, I'm no physicist either. But let's just imagine for a minute we had antiwater. The antiwater is not going to hang around waiting to get poured into the ocean to annihilate. As soon as it interacts with the number of electrons and protons equivalent to a molecule of water (10 protons, 8 neutrons, and 10 electrons)-- it would be destroyed. The antiwater would still annihilate as you poured it into the cup. In the vacuum of space it may survive a little longer.

From Wikipedia:

"Experiments by the ATRAP and ATHENA collaborations at CERN, brought together positrons and antiprotons in Penning traps, resulting in synthesis at a typical rate of 100 antihydrogen atoms per second. Antihydrogen was first produced by ATHENA in 2002,[20] and then by ATRAP[21] and by 2004, millions of antihydrogen atoms were made. The atoms synthesized had a relatively high temperature (a few thousand kelvins), and would hit the walls of the experimental apparatus as a consequence and annihilate."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antihydrogen

qultuq

duplicate post. Sorry

spiritborn

shadowfang240 wrote: »

antimatter absolutely CAN exist in the same space as normal matter - as long as whatever form of antimatter it is doesn't contact its polar opposite; particles only annihilate when they come in contact with THEIR specific opposites, not with others

at least according to the layman's explanation of antimatter - i'm not a particle physicist, so i can't personally confirm that​​

Well yes and no, I'm no physicist either but due having studied energy technology I had to study the relevant areas of physics and the way I understood is that it functions the way to state in the quatum level (so Electron+positron=boom but positron+proton does not) but if I made (for example) an anti-matter copy of you I wouldn't be safe and the copy would annihilate itself in contact with any matter and not just you specifically.

jonsills

shadowfang240 wrote: »

antimatter absolutely CAN exist in the same space as normal matter - as long as whatever form of antimatter it is doesn't contact its polar opposite; particles only annihilate when they come in contact with THEIR specific opposites, not with others

at least according to the layman's explanation of antimatter - i'm not a particle physicist, so i can't personally confirm that​​

But thanks to gravity and the fact that you only encounter single forms of particles in specific lab situations, if you have matter and antimatter in the same space, they will inevitably attract one another (yes, physicists have confirmed that gravity acts the same way on matter and antimatter), and when your cloud of antiprotons encounters, say, the wall of the containment vessel, whose atoms contain protons - kaboom! That's why we haven't been able to isolate more than an extremely miniscule amount of antimatter (almost entirely antiprotons) for study; we'd need to perfect magnetic envelopes first.