Need help figuring out a possible fusion engine

[DHF]

Yes that isn't a problem, I already included Radiators for the heat :)

 

[GTOM]

I would like to have other kind of questions. Could a D-T engine go off like a bomb, or simply melt down? Would such meltdown make the environment heavily radioactive for a long time? I guess it would be still a low thrust high specific impulse drive, whether it produces thrust directly or powers ion thrusters.

 

[mfb]

You can design an engine based on bombs. Project Orion uses that idea.
A reactor cannot explode like a bomb, there is simply not enough fuel and not enough time - as soon as something goes wrong, the confinement is lost, the plasma expands and the reaction stops immediately. The reactor can handle the power output of several seconds before melting down, so in the worst case the plasma melts the innermost surface of the reactor chamber. Replace it (and let its radioactivity decay over time - that is necessary anyway), done.

 

[Drakkith]

I would like to have other kind of questions. Could a D-T engine go off like a bomb, or simply melt down? Would such meltdown make the environment heavily radioactive for a long time? I guess it would be still a low thrust high specific impulse drive, whether it produces thrust directly or powers ion thrusters.

This was a long-time belief in the Battletech universe, but the developers actually deconstructed this idea in one of their technical source manuals several years ago.

 

[DHF]

Aside from the sheer improbability of cost and availability, this is one of the reasons I strayed away from an Antimatter or Orion type drive. Early on I was in favor of The Orion style design but ultimately I didn't like the idea of my ship sitting on thousands of warheads for decades through deep space. one malfunction and there goes the whole thing. Being able to stockpile several thousand warheads for private use was also out of the realms of possibility even for a sci-fi story.

 

[mfb]

Nuclear warheads are safe to store - just remove a part of the trigger or some other vital part. They only work when fully assembled.