After the first nuclear fission power plant was built, Li Qingsong let it run for a period of time and collected a large amount of data in the process. Moreover, Li Qingsong is always investing the brainpower of thousands of people, carefully observing every process of its operation and thinking about how to optimize and improve its performance. So, in just a few months, Li Qingsong came up with thousands of optimization details and verified them in the laboratory. After that, Li Qingsong immediately started the construction of the second nuclear power plant. In the human world, the construction of every nuclear power plant needs to go through strict approval and investigation, and the construction of every nuclear power plant is a major event. Environmental impact assessment, safety, economy, regional impact, overall layout, etc., which factor does not require dozens or hundreds of expert teams to conduct years of investigation and research, generate tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of investigation documents, before a resolution can be finally passed? But for Li Qingsong, apart from the construction of the nuclear power plant itself, there are no other obstacles and nothing else to worry about. It can be built as soon as it is said, and at an extremely fast speed. So the second nuclear power plant was immediately put into operation. Compared with the first generation of nuclear power plants, this second generation, and also the second nuclear power plant, has achieved a lot of detail optimization, but it is mainly concentrated in two aspects. The first generation of nuclear power plants used water as a coolant and neutron moderator, using the water to carry away heat and heat another portion of the water to turn it into steam to drive the generator.
But in this nuclear power plant, the process was shortened from three to two. Li Qingsong no longer tried to use water as a coolant to bring out the heat. Instead, he heated the water directly in the core through the fission of uranium fuel rods. While dissipating the heat, he directly burned it into steam to drive the generator. Just by omitting one step, efficiency can be directly improved by more than 20%. Another aspect of optimization and improvement is the improvement in material performance brought about by advances in materials science. Materials science is a vital basic subject, and Li Qingsong has never relaxed his research on it over the years. No matter how many clones he has under his command, Li Qingsong can always ensure that at least 5% of the clones are engaged in materials research. Now the maximum number of his consciousness links is about million, and correspondingly, there are about 250,000 clones working in the materials research base. A variety of materials, steel, cement, plastic, heat-resistant, cold-resistant, etc., everything is included. Higher performance materials allow Li Qingsong to perform fission at a faster rate and transfer energy faster, while also improving stability and safety. The remaining adjustments are distributed in terms of overall structure, power stability, safety redundancy, etc. All in all, overall, the second-generation nuclear fission power plant not only has an efficiency improvement of more than 30% compared to the first generation, but is also more intelligent and safer. The first-generation nuclear power plant would lose 600,000 kWh of electricity per day of operation. The second-generation nuclear power plant has reduced the loss to about 250,000 kWh per day, greatly reducing the loss. Li Qingsong vaguely remembered that the nuclear fission power stations in the human world seemed to have developed to the sixth or seventh generation. In comparison, he had only developed to the second generation, and the journey ahead was still long. "But it doesn't matter, just take it one step at a time." Thinking this way, Li Qingsong quickly built the second nuclear power plant. At the same time, he repeated what he did with the first generation nuclear power plant and once again began observation, thinking, and laboratory verification. Nuclear fission power generation technology is progressing rapidly and steadily, and Li Qingsong has devoted another part of his energy to another matter. This matter is also extremely important. It can even be said that whether or not he can truly open the door to the interstellar world in the future depends on this technology. Ion propulsion technology! From the Bluetuk spaceships and warships, Li Qingsong confirmed his previous guess.
Ion propulsion technology, and its advanced technology: high-speed ion propulsion technology, are indeed the future development direction, absolutely true, there is no doubt about it. The biggest difficulties facing space travel are energy and working fluids. During long space voyages, it is usually impossible to obtain supplies from the outside world, and everything has to rely on the spacecraft's own reserves. Without a strong enough energy supply, the spacecraft cannot operate. Without enough working fluid, the spacecraft cannot eject it to propel the spacecraft. Energy can be solved through nuclear fission and nuclear fusion, but as for working fluid, there is an upper limit to the amount that a spacecraft can carry. Since the upper limit cannot be increased, we can only find ways to increase the thrust that can be provided by the unit working fluid. Ion propulsion technology is designed to solve this problem. By ionizing the working fluid and then using electromagnetic acceleration to eject the ions at extremely high speeds, just a tiny bit of working fluid can generate thrust equivalent to a large amount of chemical fuel. Of course, at this stage, Li Qingsong doesn’t have to think about high-speed ion propulsion technology for the time being. Although the mother ship of the Bluetuk civilization is equipped with high-speed ion thrusters, and Momolans and others have already tamed them and are willing to do their best to work for Li Qingsong, they are not experts in this field. At this stage, Li Qingsong's technological strength is really limited, and he cannot even reverse it. But it doesn’t matter, you can start with the basics first. Let’s first make the primary ion thruster that the human world has already mastered, which can only push a piece of paper. Thus, another new research base was built on the vast and desolate land of Luoshen. Ion Propulsion Laboratory! Ion propulsion requires a lot of electricity. Li Qingsong built a power plant to supply the electricity needed for the ion propulsion experiment. After this, comes the research and manufacture of electromagnetic accelerators. Primary electromagnetic accelerators are relatively simple. For example, the electromagnetic accelerator previously built on Enemy Star is an application of this technology. However, to change it to accelerated ions, the technical requirements are different and the difficulty increases greatly. "The technology used in the ion thruster is similar to the electromagnetic cannon I will develop in the future, as well as the particle collider for basic physics research. Once I master the ion thruster technology, I can start preliminary research on electromagnetic guns and particle colliders." Li Qingsong thought secretly and threw himself into the research with passion and enthusiasm. With the investment of a large number of clones, resources and energy, the ionizer was gradually developed successfully, the precision electromagnetic acceleration coil technology achieved a breakthrough, and the energy stabilization module achieved a breakthrough... After a series of breakthroughs, a huge cylindrical thruster with a total mass of more than 300 tons and a length of more than ten meters appeared in front of Li Qingsong.
