As the situation in the South Island began to surging undercurrents, Ye Zhou finally waited for the first nuclear-powered aviation ground interview that he had been thinking about.

Due to unknown safety, he was not invited to participate in this test run -- or he was strictly prohibited from participating.

Therefore, he could only watch the entire test run through remote videos. Apart from the additional confidential data on the interface, it was no different from ordinary staff who saw live broadcasts from the internal network.

At 10 o'clock in the morning, the ground interview stand had completed all preparations and the engine had been hoisted on the shelves. Due to the particularity of engine fuel, even the oil pipeline was directly saved. In addition to the circuit used to control the aeroengine core, a purely mechanical emergency parking device was installed at the position that originally belonged to the oil pipeline.

This device is independent of the control system of the Aviation Engine itself. In case of an emergency, it will directly open the reactor core through violent disassembly, pour a large amount of coolant and slower agent through the pipeline, forcing the fission reaction to stop.

During this process, all the radiation generated by fission in the core will be leaked. Therefore, in order to avoid nuclear radiation pollution, the test bench was actually sealed in a huge cement coffin. Once an accident occurs, the engineering troops prepared on the periphery will seal the entire cement coffin and completely abandon this nuclear-powered aircraft prototype.

So, this aircraft engine actually has only one chance.

If it fails and wants to start over, it will take another year, or at least half a year.

This made everyone a little nervous. After all, this engine not only embodies their efforts for more than two years, but also represents the first major achievement of the Nantianmen project.

If nuclear-powered aircraft engines are successful, the biggest difficulty of Jinwu will be solved; if it fails, the progress of the entire Jinwu project will be slowed down.

Ye Zhou, sitting in the conference room, looked nervously at the screen. The staff who were busy doing the final inspection had begun to evacuate. The heavy radiation-proof isolation door in the test drive workshop was closed, and the engine entered the simulation operation inspection stage. After the inspection was completed, once the control rod was pulled out, the core would quickly enter the critical state.

After that, the core entering the critical state will generate a large amount of heat, which heats the air outside the reactor through a heat exchanger to generate the high temperature and high pressure air flow required by the turbine engine, thereby driving the turbine engine to operate.

Essentially, this is an engine that uses nuclear fuel to heat instead of fossil fuel. The nuclear core replaces the position of the original combustion chamber. The so-called "combustion" has changed from direct to indirect, but the basic principle has not actually changed.

Therefore, the technical achievements made on Qilian engines can still be applied to this engine, such as fan blade materials, high-temperature resistant materials, radiation-proof materials...

It was not until this time that Ye Zhou discovered that the scientific and technological achievements he had obtained in his previous simulations, especially in the field of materials science, actually played a greater role than he had imagined.

"So, this engine is so large, how can it be installed on an aircraft? According to what you told me before, the thrust of an engine is only about 100 tons. Judging from the current design drawings of Jinwu, it requires at least 400 tons of thrust. How should this be arranged in the future?"

Hearing Chen Hao’s question, Ye Zhou shook his head and replied:

"What you see now is not 'an engine', but a nuclear reactor, and a turbofan engine."

“To be precise, the structure of a nuclear-powered engine is different from that of a traditional aircraft engine, because the high-pressure airflow is generated in different ways, and it must be split into two parts.”

"One of the parts is the reactor part, which plays the role of a ‘core combustion chamber’. Here, after heat heats up the air inflows into the inlet, it is discharged into the real ‘engine’ through the pipeline."

"So, the volume of this engine system is not equal to the volume of the reactor plus the engine. Instead, multiple engines can be configured on one reactor."

"As long as the heat generated by a nuclear reactor is sufficient, theoretically, there can be more than 8 engines that a reactor can carry - of course, we don't need that many."

After listening to Ye Zhou's explanation, Chen Hao nodded slightly and then continued to ask:

"Then the question is, is this small reactor enough heat?"

"It's theoretically enough. This core uses the fifth-generation miniaturized thorium-based molten salt reactor. The thermal efficiency exceeds the mainstream Rankine cycle and the working temperature reaches a maximum of 1,600 degrees, which is comparable to the traditional combustion aircraft engine."

"More importantly, you now look small, which is relative to the generator you have seen. In fact, the size of the 'combustion chamber' of this aeroengine system is larger than the 10 Qilian engines combined."

"So, it's completely fine to push the turbofan engine at the rear end, the problem is that the gas expansion rate is smaller than the way chemical combustion is."

"This flaw can only win by quantity."

"In general, instead of worrying about thrust, it is better to worry about the intake problem. With such a huge amount of high-pressure gas consumption, I don't know how to design the subsequent Jinwu to meet the intake requirements... But this is not the problem to be solved today."

"Okay, now the engine is starting to warm up, let's see first."

While speaking, the data on the screen showed that the engine had entered preheating, the core temperature continued to rise, and finally stopped at a range of around 700 degrees. The airflow entered the turbofan engine along the second circuit. The fan blades began to rotate, and the engine nozzle sprayed a hot wake.

At this time, the thrust of the entire engine had increased to 15 tons, but it did not continue to rise like the previous Qilian engine test run.

“What stage is this?”

At this time, Chen Hao seemed to have regarded Ye Zhou as an encyclopedia, and asked questions directly when he encountered a problem he couldn't understand.

"Now is the preheating and stabilization stage. The heat exchange device of a nuclear-powered engine is very complex. It is impossible for a stable combustion temperature like a traditional fossil fuel engine, as long as the fuel injection is controlled," he said.

"Every time the engine is started, the fission core needs to be stable, the heat exchanger needs to be stable, and each circuit needs to be stable, which is also the biggest problem for nuclear engines - it is impossible to start in time."

"It is because of this reason that the golden crow is designed to be such a large size, because after one takeoff, it is destined to maintain aerial cruise for a long time, and the time it stays on the ground is actually very short."

"It may not be as short as possible. Landing, crew replacement, takeoff, is that simple."

It's really the sun that never sets.

Hearing this, Chen Hao thought to himself.

Time passed minute by minute, the engine preheating state finally ended, and the thrust data displayed on the screen began to rise slowly, starting from 15 tons, and the data climbed steadily and regularly to 60 tons.

To this extent, it can be basically considered that the basic performance of this engine has reached the level of current traditional engines.

But neither Ye Zhou nor Chen Hao were satisfied with this result, because they had seen the feat of the Qilian engine breaking through 140 tons of thrust in the first test run.

"How many tons do you think you can get this time?"

Ye Zhou shook his head and replied:

"Theoretically, if the bearing capacity of each engine module is not considered, the power output from the core is enough for the thrust of the engine to be more than 300 tons, but we cannot achieve such structural strength, so we can only disperse the power."

"Now there is only one engine, so... I think it should be controlled at about 120 tons."

As if in response to his words, the engine and thrust data continued to climb, and the core temperature also exceeded the subcritical temperature of 1,000 degrees. In just two minutes, the engine thrust jumped directly from 60 tons to 100 tons.

A large amount of redundant gas is discharged through the reserved exhaust ports, simulating the working state of multiple machines in parallel. But strangely, everyone can clearly see the light distorted by the high-temperature airflow, but they cannot see the wake itself at all.

If the live broadcast voice transmission is turned off, the working state of this engine is a complete silence.

Apart from the slight jitter of the engine structure, it is impossible to even judge whether it has started from the appearance.

"It's almost reached its limit - the temperature reaches 1600 degrees, which is close to the critical temperature of the thorium-based molten salt pile. We must reserve a certain safety margin."

Hearing Ye Zhou's words, Chen Hao asked in surprise:

"You mean, if necessary, we can also run the engine in supercritical state?"

"Yes, but it's easy to enter the supercritical state, but it's not easy to return to the critical state. This should be said to be a one-time solution that can only be used when the situation is extremely critical."

Chen Hao nodded solemnly and turned his gaze back to the screen.

As Ye Zhou judged, the thrust of this engine was finally stable at 120 tons. After more than ten minutes of continuous operation, the engine began to enter the shutdown process.

One hour later, the engine turned off, the radiation detection was completed, and after confirming that the radiation dose in the workshop was normal, the staff opened the workshop door and re-entered the test drive workshop.

It was not until the final inspection that the thunderous cheers burst out in the workshop.

Ye Zhou breathed a sigh of relief and quit the live broadcast interface.

...

The first test run of the nuclear-powered engine ended without any turmoil, but the sensation it caused around the world was like a huge wave.

That night, with the release of the test run results, sensational news began to appear on the front pages of international media.

"The Cold War monster resurrects the soul, and the Eastern Dragon regains the forbidden technique!"

"The artificial sword of Damocles, the hilt has been cast!"

"How big is China's ambitions in the breakthrough of the Jinwu project?"

"Is a nuclear-powered engine a blessing or bad news?"

"The product from hell is about to fly to heaven, the kingdom of the east is actually the kingdom of Satan?"

.....

Among this series of reports, only the Maoxiong Kingdom reports are the most normal.
Chapter completed!