Chapter 309: Nuclear power train

Although the scientific researchers answered Chen Xin with only one simple

sentence, what is behind this sentence is the hard work of many people.

In Jianning, another city in Hunan province not far from Chen Xin's city,

workers are intensively debugging a brand new train in the factory.

The meteorite falling from the sky not only brought dusty nights, but also

destroyed the railway power supply lines that were originally all over the

country, so that the country can only take out the old coal-fired steam

locomotives for reuse, and the original electric locomotives are no longer

available. Most of them are lying down.

Although there are still some fuel locomotives that can be used, due to fuel

shortages, all these movable fuel locomotives have been deployed to the most

critical places to be responsible for the transportation of the most critical

materials.

But in addition, comrades on the railway front have also been thinking of ways

to restore railway capacity.

The train they are currently debugging is a new train specially researched and

developed by Jianning's train factory to restore railway capacity.

The carriage of the train has been specially designed for heat preservation,

cold protection, frost resistance and wind resistance. While thickening the

carriage wall, it also increases the stability of the car body.

According to the original design indicators, this new car needs to deal with

ten-level winds and a low temperature of minus 50 degrees, but now it is clear

that this car needs to face more severe challenges.

The workers in the manufacturing plant adjusted and reinforced it, added a

counterweight to the body, and replaced the thermal insulation material in the

compartment wall to ensure that it can still have sufficient thermal

insulation in an environment of minus 70 degrees.

Because this train is not only used to transport some valuable materials, it

is also an attempt by the state to restore personnel transportation.

Before the disaster, Jianning was an important train production base in Yan

Country. The locomotives produced here are also famous for Yan Country. Even

the trains running on Yan Country's important high-speed railway lines are

mostly produced here.

Therefore, for the workers of Jianning Train Manufacturing Plant, they are

quite rich in technology and experience.

In fact, before the disaster, they had already developed high-speed trains

that could still operate normally at a low temperature of minus 40 degrees.

Now they have only optimized the technology.

Only after the disaster, the railway power supply network across the country

was destroyed. Electric locomotives lost power and could no longer operate

normally. The original advanced electric locomotives were slumped. Even if

they were not damaged by electromagnetic pulses, they could not operate due to

lack of electricity.

After all, the curb weight of an ordinary trunk freight locomotive is as high

as 240 tons, and the traction power reaches 9600KW. Without surging power

supply, it is impossible to move this behemoth.

Therefore, the focus of the debugging of this new car is actually the front

power system, not the carriage.

Because power can no longer be supplied through the transmission line, it is

now necessary to let the front of the car itself generate power.

This is still very easy to achieve. Whether it is burning coal or oil, it can

drive a steam turbine to generate electricity, thereby providing sufficient

power for the entire train.

However, this new train built by the workers at the Jianning Train Factory

does not use an internal combustion engine as a power source, but a small

nuclear reactor.

This is a nuclear-powered locomotive.

The reactor used is Yanguo’s own technology, which was originally used on

nuclear submarines, but because of technical limitations, the volume has not

been reduced, and it cannot be applied to trains and civilian ships.

Moreover, the tonnage of nuclear submarines ranges from several thousand tons

to tens of thousands of tons. The reactor that can drive nuclear submarines is

too powerful for a train. If you want to apply it to trains, you must reduce

the size and reduce the power. .

However, this is not something that can be easily done. Except for the nuclear

charging part of the reactor itself, related supporting equipment will occupy

a huge space. A compartment is specially designed on the submarine to provide

a place for nuclear reactors. This can be done on warships, but obviously not

on trains. There is not such a big place.

However, Chen Xin’s isotope thermoelectric battery gave researchers a lot of

inspiration and technical support, allowing them to successfully miniaturize

the reactor on the original nuclear submarine, and improve the related

technology, to successfully build a train that can be installed on a train.

Small nuclear reactor on board.

This reactor is not a traditional light water reactor, but a thermoelectric

conversion type similar to an isotope thermoelectric battery, which directly

converts heat energy into electrical energy.

There are many benefits of this. The core full of radioactivity can be

completely sealed to prevent radiation leakage, because it only needs to

conduct heat and convert it into electrical energy, instead of injecting

cooling water into the reactor to boil the water to drive the steam turbine to

generate electricity. In terms of efficiency, the former is naturally more

efficient.

With such a small nuclear reactor, driving a train has become a very easy

task, even if the traction power of a passenger train has more than 5600KW.

Because the general small nuclear reactor refers to a reactor with an output

power of less than 300MW, 1MW is 1000KW, if you want to drive a train, only

10~15MW of power is enough.

The output power of the small reactor currently installed on this new train is

35MW. In addition to driving the train itself, it can also provide plenty of

electricity for the body for heating, lighting, and a series of electricity

needs, including deicing. And wrecking.

This project was established and started research three months before the

meteorite fell, and the manufacture of the car body began at that time.

The progress of other parts is very fast, the only limitation is the power

system~www.mtlnovel.com~ This is not until Chen Xin provided the country with

isotope temperature difference batteries, the restrictions were lifted, and

this new train finally successfully moved. Off the production line, it is

about to be put into operation.

The first task of this new nuclear-powered train is to transport production

equipment to the city where Chen Xin is located.

It is the special train mentioned in what the researchers told Chen Xin.

Its successful operation is not only the improvement of railway transportation

conditions and the increase of capacity, but also a more convenient and safer

way of nuclear power application.

The power generation of the small nuclear reactor used on the train is enough

to supply all the electricity used in a small county before the disaster. In

this case, if a city can have a small nuclear reactor, then the entire city’s

electricity will be used. There is no need to worry at all, and even the

heating method can be converted into electric heating.

The reason why Yan Guo did not do this before was because there were too many

technical problems that could not be solved, and it was too late to build a

new nuclear power plant temporarily, so this method was not used to power the

shelter before the disaster.

But now that safe and reliable small-scale nuclear reactor technology is

available, the senior officials of Yan Guo will obviously not let go of such

clean, efficient and convenient energy.