Long story short-I’m a recent member of the USS Dakota’s Engineering division, just out of the academy and all that. I’ve been assigned to work with and maintain the Warp Core of the ship and have been down near it so much that it’s not uncommon for me to end up falling asleep at my station rather than my quarters.
Being so close to the thing so regularly isn’t going to like, give me super-cancer or anything right? I know the damn thing is technically radioactive…
Comments
Warp cores are not radioactive in the same way that fission or fusion reactors are. They take hydrogen fuel, specifically the deuterium isotope and its antimatter equivalent, and collide them together to turn both atoms into energy – there’s nothing left after, it’s a 1:1 reaction that converts all matter into energy. No byproducts except photons.
Those photons are channelled by dilithium crystals into even more deuterium, turning it into plasma, which is then fed to key systems, primarily the warp engines, but plasma is also used as a general electricity supply for other high energy systems, such as weapons and computers.
These EPS power taps run all over the ship. If there was a danger from this plasma energy then the entire crew would be subjected to it, not just you! Admittedly the bigger energies nearer the warp core are undoubtedly a bigger effect but there’s no evidence that a properly maintained warp core should be putting out anything particularly toxic. We’ve been flying ships with M/AM reactors for hundreds of years. No one ever got warp cancer.
Now, the same can’t be said for certain other species, who don’t have the same safety standards, but you’re pretty safe on a Starfleet ship.