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Frivolous Nuclear Question
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richard.cs:

--- Quote from: daqq on May 12, 2021, 01:51:43 pm ---Is, say, 20MW that much heat when you are underground?

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Short term maybe not, but long-term I think so - it doesn't really go anywhere. Having looked at this for heatsinking some buried electronics you can sink a lot of heat into making the rocks warm, but it doesn't actually migrate outwards very fast at all and eventually you're sat in the middle of a big hot sphere.
Cerebus:

--- Quote from: richard.cs on May 12, 2021, 02:02:11 pm ---Short term maybe not, but long-term I think so - it doesn't really go anywhere. Having looked at this for heatsinking some buried electronics you can sink a lot of heat into making the rocks warm, but it doesn't actually migrate outwards very fast at all and eventually you're sat in the middle of a big hot sphere.

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The thermal time constant of the ground is measured in years. In some places where the annual seasonal temperature range is suitable people have used the ground as a combined heat source/sink for heat pump systems. In the summer you dump heat into the ground, in the winter you extract that heat back out of the ground, the amount of heat that migrates away between when you're using it as a sink and using it as a source is little enough to make the system practical.
Cerebus:

--- Quote from: RoGeorge on May 12, 2021, 01:07:47 pm ---Sounds like a futile exercise.  Let's say the year is now, 2021. 

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Seeing as the opening premise is that "it is early in the Cold War" you can't just solve the problem by changing the core premise and advancing time by 60 years.

If you don't like the game, go and pick another one to play somewhere else, don't just barge in and mess up the game for the people who are playing.
themadhippy:
very easy to get rid of toxic hot air if you vented it from the roof of the building were ever the government sits ,no one would notice the difference
ajb:

--- Quote from: LaserSteve on May 11, 2021, 08:14:29 pm ---how would you hide the fuel cycle in the middle of DC?
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Well, it helps that the pentagon isn't in the middle of DC--it's across the river in Virginia  :P  There has been a TON of development in VA (like all the other suburbs of DC) in the last several decades, so during the time of interest there would be a lot more undeveloped land to work with than there is now, even within a few km of the pentagon. 

The DC metro area is a major population center and as such requires a lot of infrastructure.  For a sense of scale, there are multiple five to eight foot diameter water mains serving the region today, although I'm not sure what the growth curve of the area around the pentagon has been like to say specifically how that translates to the cold war era.  The Metro (train) system was first built in the 70s, though, and that sort of project could absolutely provide cover for a lot of clandestine construction.  I would expect the pentagon to already have its own power plant, at least for steam for heating/hot water given the age and size of the building, and I don't think anyone would bat an eye at an expansion of those systems.  An on-campus power plant also gives you some cover for waste heat, although probably nowhere near what you'd need for a nuke plant. 

The Potomac river is only about 24ft deep, so I don't think you could hide gas discharge very well in that little depth, plus there were serious pollution issues with the river that weren't addressed until the 70s/80s which could have complicated the effort.  Like foaming from protein content in the water, the gas bubbles liberating all kinds of unpleasant odors, and possible interaction with the local flora/fauna and bacterial/algal loads.  As far as heat, the Potomac discharges about 10,810 cu.ft/s or about 306m^3/s, so back-of-the-envelope that's a heat capacity of about 1.28GJ/°C, if you could somehow get sufficient mixing.  That would be a serious plumbing challenge though and would be hard to disguise. 
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