Nuclear reactor

A nuclear reactor was a device which used provided power through radiation. Reactors used energy from either nuclear fission or nuclear fusion.

A naturally-occurring nuclear reactor formed in Africa in an underground vein of radioactive pitchblende, with continental rock shielding the reaction. (TOS novel: Mutiny on the Enterprise)

More than a dozen such formations occurred in western Africa two billion years ago. (Nature's Nuclear Reactors article at the Scientific American website.)

History[]

On Earth in the 20th century, a crude nuclear fission-powered reactor was at the core of an atomic bomb. Nog told Quark about it while they were on Earth during a time travel accident to 1947. If humans irradiated their own planet, Quark figured he could sell them anything. (DS9 episode: "Little Green Men")

In the 1970s, the Chrysalis Project facility in India had a fission-powered nuclear reactor. When Walter Takagi, on 18 May 1974, gave Roberta Lincoln a tour of Chrysalis, he showed her the reactor, remarking that its maximum output could exceed 25,000 volts. Deeming the project a danger to the human race, Gary Seven cycled the reactor to overload. The project's director, Sarina Kaur, nearly aborted the destruct sequence before Seven further damaged the hardware, sealing the facility's fate. The Indian government covered up the meltdown as a nuclear weapons test. (TOS novel: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh, Volume 1)

During a time travel mission to 1986, Nyota Uhura and Pavel Chekov collected high-energy photons from a nuclear reactor aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise in order to recrystallize fractured dilithium crystals aboard the HMS Bounty. (TOS movie & novelization: The Voyage Home)

In the 21st century, Earth's Vanguard colony and other L-5 Colonies had nuclear reactors. During a warp field accident that displaced the colonies hundreds of light years in 2058, automatic safety protocols jettisoned the nuclear reactor of Vanguard colony. (TLE novel: The Sundered)

The SS Valiant's impulse engines were nuclear powered. A magnetic storm disabled both their warp and impulse engines in the late 2060s. (TNG novel: The Valiant)

The impulse engines of the Daedalus-class USS Benjamin Franklin were powered by nuclear reactors. In 2181, when a malfunction threatened a meltdown that would have destroyed the ship, Captain Iwasaki Ikushima entered the reactor room and shut down the reactor manually, but extreme radiation exposure killed him in less than an hour. (TNG - Starfleet Academy novel: The Haunted Starship)

Hundreds of years ago, the humanoid natives of a planet in the universe of superspace used a nuclear reactor to power their civilization. It was left running after the people were forced underground by their war machine. In 2267, a member of the Galactic Space Patrol landed on the planet in a spacecraft and was attacked by the reactivated war machine. He fled into the ruins of a city and discovered the reactor, which contaminated him with radiation. Realizing that he was going to die anyway, the man set the reactor's controls to overload, causing it to explode and destroy the machine. (TOS comic: "Siege in Superspace")

In the 23rd century, pergium was an essential component of nuclear reactors on Federation colonies. (TOS reference: Worlds of the Federation)

In 2268, the starship USS Enterprise was engaged in a peace mission to help Rudimon's rebuilding efforts after a lengthy war. A forgotten nuclear reactor overloaded underneath Rudimon's largest city, resulting in the deaths of 20 percent of the ship's crew. The ship was forced to retreat to Starbase 47 and provide medical care for injured personnel. (TOS - Star Trek: The Manga - Uchu comic: "The Humanitarian")

In 2268, earthquakes in the wake of Ceti Alpha VI's explosion forced Khan Noonien Singh and his people to seek underground shelter on Ceti Alpha V, but tons of granite blocked their return to the surface. Khan used a phaser at maximum power to free his people, letting go of the overloading weapon only to throw it into the blockage as it exploded, freeing them. The effort turned his hand into a charred ruin, and Khan felt like it had been stuck inside the core of a nuclear reactor. (TOS - The Eugenics Wars novel: To Reign in Hell)

In 2375, a nuclear reactor near Vanes Marineris experienced a coolant malfunction. To prevent a meltdown on Mars, the USS Enterprise-E was forced to yank the reactor off the surface with a tractor beam. (TNG - Maximum Warp novel: Dead Zone)