What exactly is powering the temple?

PalmerSperry wrote: I have my doubts about the turbines continuing to work for a 1000 years or more though ...

Definitely. I think the turbines themselves *COULD* last forever, but the bearings will definitely wear out.

Or the Terran Federation made thermocouples that where vastly superior to 20th century technology and the geothermal plan does a straight "hot fluid to electricity" conversion?

I am not sure that their thermocouples necessarilly need to be any better. As long as you have enough of a heat delta, and enough thermocouples... On the other hand, they might have peltier generators that could be much better than ours. Maybe made from graphene.

Everyone's making good points about moving parts and 1000-year operating life.

There's textev for nanotech self-repair capabilities. Merlin's body has them. If little nanobots are rebuilding the bearings as fast as they wear down then all our intuitions and experience about moving parts fly out the window.

I don't know enough about fission reactor engineering to answer this. What if you kept one barely ticking over, at a tiny fraction of capacity? How long would it last? Then you'd have huge surge capability for emergencies.

Expert snuggler wrote:Everyone's making good points about moving parts and 1000-year operating life.

There's textev for nanotech self-repair capabilities. Merlin's body has them. If little nanobots are rebuilding the bearings as fast as they wear down then all our intuitions and experience about moving parts fly out the window.

I don't know enough about fission reactor engineering to answer this. What if you kept one barely ticking over, at a tiny fraction of capacity? How long would it last? Then you'd have huge surge capability for emergencies.

Even if it were "barely ticking over" the fuel rods in a fission reactor would decay over time. I doubt you could have a stable reactor that could run off the original fuel rods for 1000 years. I believe most reactors today have their fuel rods replaced somewhere around every 10 years.

And producing replacement rods isn't a "non-technological" endeavor.

Zion is on the bank of Lake Pei, so it's more likely to be a fusion reactor using hydrogen extracted from lake water.

Or it could be geothermal. There might even be provisions for solar, but that would probably only contribute during the summer.

For that matter, there could be a solar power collector satellite in orbit, beaming down energy, though I doubt they'd leave any more technology in orbit than they really had to.

OrlandoNative wrote:For that matter, there could be a solar power collector satellite in orbit, beaming down energy, though I doubt they'd leave any more technology in orbit than they really had to.

My guess would be geothermal too, perhaps combined with fusion for emergency or times when much power is needed. OTOH, Merlin would probably notice the collector satellite during his trips to the orbit and at least consider taking it down.

OrlandoNative wrote:Even if it were "barely ticking over" the fuel rods in a fission reactor would decay over time. I doubt you could have a stable reactor that could run off the original fuel rods for 1000 years. I believe most reactors today have their fuel rods replaced somewhere around every 10 years.

And producing replacement rods isn't a "non-technological" endeavor.

My money would be on geothermal or fusion, too.

Today's reactors have to be refueled because some of the long-lived fission products absorb neutrons. At low power they would last much longer. U-235 has a half-life over 700 million years, so we don't need to worry about decay.

We do need to worry about neutrinos, if the Gbaba have neutrino detectors and if the Federation didn't have neutrino shielding.

While I doubt it's the design in use I think I see how to build a very long-life nuclear reactor:

1) Embrittlement: The neutron flux wrecks the metal in time. Ok, lets not subject the reactor vessel to the neutron flux in the first place: Build your reactor *big*. There's enough water (or whatever your coolant is) around the fission core that the pressure vessel isn't irradiated.

2) Fuel: They could have stockpiled plenty of fuel, or they could be gathering it as time goes on--a heavy water reactor can run on unenriched uranium so you don't need a separation plant.

Now, what about changing fuel rods? Lets build our reactor without fuel rods in the first place. Instead, thread a bunch of pipes through the reactor vessel. Thread in this case is literal, they have screw threads where they penetrate the vessel wall.

Fuel pellets are dropped into these pipes and removed from below the reactor--the fuel slowly changes over without ever having to stop the reactor to change it.

The guide pipes are in the danger zone for embrittlement so they're considered expendable, also. They are turning very slowly, the thread moves them through. They come in sections which are threaded together, once a section has come out it can be unscrewed, a new section can be screwed on the top.

Presto, a reactor which needs only minor things done to it to keep running. The fuel offloading is accomplished by means of wheels that turn something like one turn/week, they have something akin to one turn of an archimedies screw that rotates. It's sized to match the fuel pellets, each revolution allows one pellet to drop off.

Off the top of my head I'm not seeing a simple system to remove the embrittled pipes but since they have robots they certainly can manage it.

Now, while this system would work I think it much more likely they would use geothermal power. So long as you don't mind lower efficiency you can build power sources with no moving parts at all--exceedingly low maintenance.


Note that unlike what someone said upthread you will have waste heat. All heat engines are subject to Carnot efficiency limits and I expect the waste will be substantial as they are more interested in durability than efficiency. This means a lower hot temperature and thus a lower efficiency.

If it's geothermal and not nuclear, then it's a propaganda win for the good guys if they get control and give tours. That would be demonstrably within human capability and not a divine miracle.

Expert snuggler wrote:If it's geothermal and not nuclear, then it's a propaganda win for the good guys if they get control and give tours. That would be demonstrably within human capability and not a divine miracle.

Not to mention a justification for the propriety of steam/heat to power Safehold. The AAs left a power source that they knew did not violate the proscriptions for their charges after they left.

Unless, of course, it's rationalized as being the work of Langhorne himself and therefore not a blasphemous usurpation.

You know... On the original plan, Hamilcar at least was to be kept in-system but some way off as a target for exploration and as a tangible yardstick/teaching aide for recovering Terran Federation technology, exceeding it, and taking on the Gbaba eventually. Even if it is gone, the Temple itself is going to serve as a fine example of TF power and defensive systems. So would the OBS, if it can be turned off or assigned Safehold-friendly targeting directions.

The monument to the triumph of Langhorne's plan (or Langhorne's successors, at any rate) will turn out to be a key part of the program to overturn it. What elegant irony!