Codex discussion: uranium, plutonium, solarium ore

I mentioned before about the playerbase writing up a codex for technology that exists in our little fictional universe. Chucklefish have added their own lore, but it's not hard science fiction, which becomes a problem for people who want to roleplay hard science fiction.

One of these problems are the fuels. In the X-sector, uranium, plutonium and solarium can all be easily found in abundance.

Uranium ore
This is pretty easy to explain. The uranium mined in our Starbound universe is similar to uranium on Earth:
In nature, uranium is found as uranium-238 (99.2739–99.2752%), uranium-235 (0.7198–0.7202%), and a very small amount of uranium-234 (0.0050–0.0059%).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium)
This means creating nuclear bombs using uranium requires enrichment or a nuclear reactor, and we avoid the issue of "any idiot can build a nuclear bomb".

Plutonium ore
This is where things get a little tricky. The only plutonium isotope that is found in nature is plutonium-244:
Plutonium-244 (244Pu) is an isotope of plutonium that has a halflife of 80 million years. This is longer than any of the other isotopes of plutonium and longer than any actinide except for the three naturally abundant ones uranium-235 (704 million years), uranium-238, and thorium-232.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-244)
Even uranium-235, which is what is used in nuclear bombs, has a halflife of 703.8 million years, meaning that plutonium-244 should be much, much rarer. Furthermore, plutonium-244 doesn't have any well known uses (maybe a nuclear physicist could tell us what the use of an abundant amount of plutonium-244 is).

This leaves us a few questions:
- Where did all the plutonium come from on X-sector planets?
- What uses does plutonium-244 have?
- Will mined plutonium contain trace elements of other plutonium isotopes (similar to how uranium contains other isotopes)? If yes, we have to consider that other plutonium have much, much shorter halflifes.

Solarium ore
This material is fictional. The only things we know about it are:
- Its appearance as a yellow-gold ore that looks like a star.
- "It's solarium. A fantastic source of fuel."
- It's name, solarium, that suggests some sort of relationship to stars.
Considering that stars primarily consist of hydrogen and helium and produce energy through the thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium, it's unlikely solarium is "made of stars", as its appearance and name might suggest. This gives us a lot of creative freedom to give solarium any properties we like and make it an interesting material that allows for fictional technology to be possible.

What I'd personally think the properties of solarium should be is:
- Solarium is a super-heavy element. Solarium ore occurs naturally mostly in a more stable isotope (half life similar to uranium-238), with trace elements of a less stable isotope (like uranium-235).
- Solarium can be used to produce ultra-efficient thermoelectric generators with a typical efficiency of around 95%, far exceeding that of turbines. This process requires a significant amount of space, as well as both the more stable and less stable isotopes of solarium in a form that poses a potential radiological hazard, requiring shielding, as well as being expensive. More traditional designs such as turbines use up less space and cost less, but are nowhere near as efficient.
- Solarium can be used to produce ultra-compact and efficient thermoelectric generators with a typical efficiency of around 50%. This allows for the development miniaturized power generators, for portable power armor or weapons, and only requires the more stable version of solarium, decreasing the radiological hazard posed and thus not requiring shielding. This is also an expensive process, but allows miniaturized generators to rival that of traditional turbines, using far less space, but far more costly.
- Solarium can be used to produce panels that, when exposed to sunlight or a similar composition of visible, infrared and ultraviolet light, generates electricity. Unlike solar panels, solarium panels do not convert light to electricity using a photovoltaic effect - the light instead acts as a catalyst that causes a chemical reaction in the solar panels, generating power far greater than the amount of light entering the panel. This eventually renders the solarium panel inert after a few decades of usage. Solarium panels are cheap to build and are a more desirable alternative to solarium fission - fission requires more infrastructure, and the amount of power generated by solarium panels using natural sunlight rivals that of solarium fission in the long run.
- The less stable isotope of solarium is fissionable, and can be used for nuclear fission power generation, or with enrichment, nuclear weapons. This requires infrastructure similar to that for uranium (although obviously of a different design - uranium enrichment processes will not work on solarium without significant modification). Solarium panels make the fission of solarium undesirable, as solarium panels require almost no infrastructure.
- Solarium is poisonous when consumed or handled, requiring containment.

 

I miss these

 

GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE

I've thought we've needed this for a long time, and I'd be completely onboard to help ya'll out.