Chapter 309 - 307 Nuclear-Powered Train
Although the researchers only gave Chen Xin a simple sentence in response, this sentence implies the hard work of many people.
Not far from the city where Chen Xin was located, in another city in Xiang Province called Jinning, workers were intensely testing a brand new train inside the factory buildings.
The meteorite disaster not only brought a long night with dust blocking the sun, but also destroyed the nationwide railway power supply lines, forcing the country to reuse old coal-powered steam locomotives, as most electric trains were incapacitated.
While there were still some diesel locomotives available, due to fuel shortages, these remaining operational diesel locomotives were allocated to the most critical areas to transport essential supplies.
Nevertheless, comrades on the railway front have always sought ways to restore railway transport capacity.
The train they are currently testing is a new model researched and developed by the Jinning Railway Factory to restore railway transport capacity.
The train cars have been specially designed for thermal insulation, cold resistance, frost resistance, and wind resistance. While thickening the car walls, they also increased the stability of the train body.
According to the original design specifications, this new train was meant to withstand level 10 winds and temperatures as low as minus fifty degrees, but now it clearly faces more severe challenges.
The factory workers made adjustments and reinforcements, adding counterweights to the train body and replacing the insulation materials inside the car walls to ensure sufficient thermal insulation even in minus seventy-degree environments.
This train is not only intended for transporting valuable goods but also represents an attempt by the state to restore passenger transportation.
Before the disaster, Jinning was already an important train production base for Flame Country, and the locomotives produced here were renowned throughout Flame Country, even running on major high-speed railway lines.
Therefore, for the workers at the Jinning Railway Factory, both technically and experientially, they are quite equipped.
In fact, before the disaster, they had already developed high-speed trains capable of normal operation in temperatures below minus forty degrees, and now they have merely further optimized the technology.
However, after the disaster, the nationwide railway power supply network was destroyed, and electric locomotives were left without power, unable to operate. Even if they weren’t damaged by electromagnetic pulses, they couldn’t run due to lack of electricity.
After all, the preparation weight of an ordinary trunk freight locomotive reaches 240 tons, with a traction power of 9600KW, making it impossible to move without a robust power supply.
Thus, the focus of the testing of this new train is actually on the locomotive’s power system, not the cars.
Since it’s no longer possible to provide power through power supply lines, the locomotive itself must now generate power.
This is still achievable, as both coal and oil can drive steam turbines to generate electricity, thus providing ample power for the entire train.
However, this time, the new train produced by the workers at the Jinning Railway Factory does not use an internal combustion engine as its power source but instead uses a small nuclear reactor.
This is a nuclear-powered locomotive.
The reactor used is technology indigenous to Flame Country, originally intended for nuclear submarines, but the size couldn’t be reduced further, making it impossible to use on trains or civilian ships.
Moreover, the tonnage range of nuclear submarines varies from thousands to tens of thousands of tons, and a reactor capable of powering a submarine would provide too much power for a train, so apart from reducing its size, its power output had to be reduced.
However, this is not something easily accomplished. Excluding the nuclear fuel section of the reactor itself, the associated equipment occupies considerable space. On submarines, a dedicated compartment is designed to house the nuclear reactor, something possible on large warships, but clearly not feasible for trains, which lack sufficient space.
But Chen Xin’s Isotope Thermoelectric Battery provided researchers with numerous inspirations and technical support, allowing them to successfully miniaturize the submarine reactor and improve related technologies, successfully creating a small nuclear reactor suitable for installation on a train.
This reactor is not a conventional light-water reactor but is similar to an Isotope Thermoelectric Battery in thermal-to-electric conversion style, directly converting heat energy into electrical energy.
This approach has many benefits. The radioactive core can be completely sealed to prevent radiation leakage, as only heat conduction is needed to convert into electricity, not cooling water injected into the reactor for steam turbine generation, making the energy conversion efficiency of the former naturally higher.
With such a small nuclear reactor, powering a train becomes an easy task, even when a passenger train’s traction power is over 5600KW.
Generally, a small nuclear reactor refers to one with an output power below 300MW, where 1MW is 1000KW, and driving a train requires only 10~15MW of power.
The small reactor installed on this new train currently has an output power of 35MW, which can not only power the train itself but also provide ample electricity for heating, lighting, and various other electrical needs, including de-icing and obstacle removal.
The project was initiated and started resonating manufacturing three months before the meteorite impact.
Progress on other aspects was swift, with the only limitation being the power system, which was resolved when Chen Xin provided the Isotope Thermoelectric Battery to the state, lifting the constraints and allowing this new train to roll off the production line, ready for operation.
The first mission of this new nuclear-powered train is to transport production equipment to the city where Chen Xin is located.
This is the special train mentioned in the researchers’ message to Chen Xin.
Its successful operation not only marks the improvement and enhancement of railway transport capacity but also signifies a more convenient and safer application of nuclear power.
The electric output of the small nuclear reactors used on these trains is already sufficient to power all the electricity needs of a small county before the disaster. In the current situation, if a city had a small nuclear reactor, it would not have to worry about its electricity supply, and even its heating methods could be switched to electrical heating.
The reason Flame Country hadn’t done this before was due to many unresolved technical issues and the inability to build new nuclear plants quickly, which is why this method wasn’t adopted before the disaster to supply electricity to shelters.
But now, with safe and reliable small nuclear reactor technology, the leadership of Flame Country clearly won’t miss such a clean, efficient, and convenient energy source.