If it was a matter of choice, you would engineer the material the opposite direction. If at all possible you would make it so it was more reactive, more powerful, by mass so you could use less of it to achieve the same output. Regardless, are we discussing putting an uncontrolled annihilation reaction within the ship and engineering the ship to withstand it? Why not just put this miracle feat around the entire hull and not worry about weapons fire in the first place, seems a bit more direct*Antimatter radiation largely pions, which are unreactive with matter for several dozen meters, and decay into 60% neutrinos, which are completely unreactive with normal mater. A more exotic material might produce even less reactive radiation. IIRC, the Winter Tide is relatively small, and large pieces of it might be inside a (relative) safety zone.
This kind of reactor failure is not going to be 'deflected' like a chemical explosion/shockwave in an atmosphere. An ammo explosion creates an expansive force and you "simply" allow it to expand in a direction you choose. An uncontrolled annihilation reaction is going to create an intense burst of radiation. You're not going to direct its movement 'away' and any matter it contacts will change energy states. If they find anything of the crew I imagine it would be more in the lines of thermal shadows on whatever decking is left. And even if we had a nice solid chunk of unobtainium to insulate the crew from the radiation with it wouldn't readily dissipate that absorbed energy off into space. Not when there is perfectly good matter it can conduct that energy to right there.
I can see dumping heat into the reaction fuel and burning it as an active cooling measure. I cant see having reactor fuel separated far from the reactors, not given its volatility. Presuming loss of fuel containment means loss of the ship, why create a third major point of vulnerability? My only question is how much reactor fuel mass do they actually need using anti-matterish reactions.Arioch wrote:I think those would be propellant rather than reactor fuel (even a "mostly" reactionless drive still requires reaction mass, and a matter-annihilation reactor probably doesn't produce any on its own); the struts seem too vulnerable a place to store reactor fuel. I have a notion that the propellant tanks and the engine struts operate as part of the ship's cooling system, which might explain why they seem to be relatively unprotected, and why some ships seem to have redundant struts adjacent to each other.