Younger was ranting. Jake yanked off his earphones and heard Tim bellowing, “… stupid motherfucking goddamned shitfaced sonsofbitches!”

Rogers was standing beside Jake, looking suddenly downcast, his earphones hanging around his neck.

“What happened?” Jake asked.

“Magnet developed a hot spot.”

“And that stopped the test?”

Younger was still ranting. Over his tirade, Rogers explained, “It’s a superconductor. It’s got to be cooled down by liquid nitrogen. If a hot spot develops it could grow fast enough for the magnet to dump all its energy.”

“Then the generator stops working,” Jake surmised.

With a pained grin, Rogers said, “Then the generator blows up.”

“Blows up? You mean it would explode?”

“Like a ten-ton bomb.”

Jake rocked back, remembering a set of definitions that a visiting professor had given him when he’d been a freshman: “If it stinks or pops, it’s chemistry. If it scratches or bites, it’s biology. If it doesn’t work, it’s physics.”

The MHD generator—with its superconducting magnet—was definitely in the realm of physics.

Bitter Realities

BITTER REALITIES

Rogers and Jake beat a hasty retreat from the big rig facility. Younger was howling with fury as the technicians scampered to keep out of his way.

Outside, it was starting to snow. Just a few flakes, but Jake was happy that they would probably be safely back in town before the storm got heavy.

“Well,” said Rogers as they drove down the empty road, “the generator itself was working fine. The problem was with the magnet.”

“It’s got to be cooled,” Jake said.

“Right. Two hundred below zero, Celsius.” Then he amended, “One hundred ninety-six, actually.”

“Cryogenic.”

“That’s the word for it.”

“And when a hot spot develops…”

“All the energy in the magnet dumps into it, unless you shut it down damned fast.”

“It could explode.”

“It sure as hell can explode.”

Jake thought about it as they drove through the thickening snowfall.

After a few minutes he asked, “Then why do you use a superconducting magnet? Why not an ordinary copper magnet, like the one on the little rig?”

Rogers glanced at him, then turned his focus back to the road as he explained, “You have to keep feeding electrical power to a copper magnet. A superconductor doesn’t need any power input once it’s activated. That means a lot of megawatts that we don’t have to waste running the magnet. More net power output.”

“But if it causes this kind of trouble…”

“Besides,” Rogers went on, “a superconductor produces a much stronger magnetic field than a copper magnet can. We need the strongest magnetic field we can get to help make up for the plasma’s low conductivity.”

“But still…”

Rogers broke into a wry grin. “Tim will fix the problem. He’s boiling mad now, but once he cools down he’ll figure out what went bad with the magnet and fix it.”

“You think so?”