Fusion drives and FGMP's

[shadowdragon]

I just had an interesting thought- through the many discussions on alternative drive systems for starships, HePLAR and/or fusion rockets are mentioned as having the side effect of irradiating anything in the plasma stream and due to the size of such engines, possibly doing massive radiation damage to the environment of the planet. What about FGMP's? Is not the FGMP a fusion rocket designed to be a weapon? The weapon has massive recoil (read: thrust) and an extremely long "beam" path- 360 meters as per T20, but no mention of radiation damage. Whats your take- especially those of you who play at the tech levels allowing FGMP's and love to whip them out as the answer to all combat situations?

 

[Icosahedron]

I'm not a FG munchkin, in fact I consider them so dangerous that I restrict them to purely military operations and even then only in the hands of elite units.
From a technical perspective, yes, if you have a stream of fusing plasma in the open air it will send radiation out in all directions. However, despite the 'Radiation damage' option given for some weapon systems, radiation in reality has a tendency to kill slowly - soldiers exposed to nearby FGMP fire will not drop dead on the spot, but might sue the military when they retire and find they have a radiation-induced disease, or when/if their child is born with two heads.
However, I think it is unlikely to have a measurable effect on the battlefield; unless the soldier is actually hit by the beam or is in the blast fragmentation area, in which case you can simply assume that any 'radiation damage' is covered by the normal damage roll. Even then, the radiation is more likely to kill them in the MASH tent than on the field.
Of course, you might get a few more casualties when farmers graze their cows on the local grass the following year, then people eat the meat, but that's another story...

 

[aramis]

I generally assume the radiation from the FGMP and PGMP is mostly alpha, beta, and massive IR and visible light... with some (relatively harmless) neutrinos.

It's not likely (due to low velocities) to interact enough to make radioactives.

HEPlaR, however, is another matter entirely. It's a high frac-C particle beam of hydrogen and helium plasma, with traces of carbon, lithum, etc..., and if it hits metalics, it can make them into radioactive isotopes in small but persistent quantities.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

The TNE air/raft has a HEPlaR thruster...

:toast: :toast: :toast:

 

[Johnny_BoomBoom]

Thought this might be interesting to reference for this discussion, seems that heat ,light ,neutrinos and other ionizing radiation are gonna be the main results of fusion:-

http://science.howstuffworks.com/fusion-reactor1.htm