“I don’t think this is a very good idea, Princess.”
“Not to worry, Twilight, I know exactly what I’m doing,” Princess Celestia coolly responded to her pupil’s voice of concern. The two were currently located in the basement of Canterlot Castle, positioned in front of a large metal table. On the table was an assortment of tools and construction pieces, as well as plans for the project being built. Picking up the plans, Twilight groaned.
“See, I’m not sure you do. Your plan for what you call… ‘Equestria’s Coldest and Most Bitchin’ Fridge Ever’? It doesn’t look like it adheres to any of the safety protocols for food storage equipment.”
“Protocol, schmotocol. I’m Princess Celestia! I can do whatever I want, and that includes creating the most bitchin’ fridge in Equestria.”
Twilight didn’t protest any further, choosing to watch Celestia go to work on what was sure to be the most dangerous device ever created. Not only was the wattage required to power it nearly the same as that of Ponyville as a whole, but it was going to use possibly the most dangerous liquid coolant it could.
“Twilight, be a pal and hand me the container of liquid nitrogen, would you?” Celestia’s request shook Twilight from her thoughts, and she quickly did as she was told, picking up the container with her magic and floating it over to the princess.
“Don’t you think liquid nitrogen is a bit, um, hazardous?”
“Nonsense! Plenty of ponies use it to cool their new fangled computers nowadays, so what’s the harm in using it in a fridge?”
“... No they don’t.”
“Oh, they don’t?” Celestia asked, tilting her head to the side in confusion. “I was sure they did.”
“They use water, Princess. Not a liquid that could freeze you entirely. Water,” Twilight replied, fighting the urge to bang her head against the table.
“Oh, well I suppose that explains how Luna spilled some on herself and was fine. Whoops!”
The only response Twilight could muster was to finally give in and bang her head against the table as hard as she could. Celestia simply laughed at her antics and went back to working on the fridge. For the next few minutes, neither pony spoke aside from Celestia occasionally asking Twilight to hand her something. The silence was broken, though, when Celestia thought of something. Something… incredibly stupid.
“Wait, I just had the perfect idea for an additional power source!” she exclaimed to Twilight’s horror. The bookworm didn’t even bother asking Celestia just what it was she had planned, instead choosing to wait for her to explain it further. “If I add a nuclear fission reactor, it’s bound to run at maximum capacity!”
“WHAT!? ARE YOU INSANE!? YOU CAN’T JUST BRING A NUCLEAR REACTOR INTO CANTERLOT!”
“Princess,” Celestia quickly retorted.
“But you–”
“Princess.”
“Fine, whatever, blow up Canterlot!”
Feeling triumphant, Celestia quickly rose from the bench the two were sitting on and exited the basement. While she was gone, Twilight began taking a closer look at the plans for the fridge. Based on everything Celestia had written down, it was indeed going to be the coldest fridge in the world. Not only that, but the most dangerous fridge in the known universe.
For the next thirty minutes, Twilight simply imagined various scenarios where this could go horribly wrong. She did her best to think of one in which the fridge would work perfectly fine, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t. It was simply doomed to fail, she told herself. Finally, after what seemed like another hour, the door to the basement swung open.
“I got it, Twilight!” Celestia yelled out from behind the large object in front of her, choosing to simply throw the object in the direction of Twilight instead of carrying it down the stairs. Twilight, to her credit, was able to grab it in mid-air with her magic and set it down gently by the table.
“Yeah, just throw the nuclear reactor down some stairs. I’m sure that’s safe,”
Twilight observed sarcastically. “Where in the hell did you get this thing, anyways?”
“I had Discord make one for me,” she replied quickly, as if it was the easiest thing she had done all day. “Why do you care? If you think my fridge is unsafe, you can just leave.”
“Trust me, princess, I would. But I need to be here in case you do something really stu- No, you know what? This whole thing is stupid. Your fridge is stupid, your nuclear reactor is stupid, and you’re stupid!”
“You’ll see how wrong you are in just about five minutes, Twilight. This fridge is going to be the most successful invention of the century, just you wait!”
And wait she did, watching quietly as Celestia fumbled around with hooking up her fridge to a freakin’ nuclear reactor. Twilight was at least sure that the nuclear reactor wouldn’t melt down, though. Discord likely cast some sort of spell preventing it from doing that, because after all, he wasn’t the suicidal type.
“And… done!”
“It’s… done? Really?”
“Yeah, and you were so worried…” Celestia teased Twilight. Twilight, however, was too stunned to respond. Nothing had gone wrong. Somehow, Celestia had built a device that seemed to run perfectly fine. The low hum the fridge was giving off was almost music to her ears. “Want to give it a test run, Twilight?”
“Um, I guess?” she replied, unsure if she really wanted to. It was one thing that the fridge seemed safe when it was closed, but Celestia had put liquid nitrogen inside. What if she opened it and it was leaking? That would be bad.
“I can tell you’re worried, Twilight, your face says it all. I promise you, it works perfectly fine!”
“Well, alright…” Twilight let out a sigh and grabbed the handle of the fridge. As soon as she pulled the door open, she was thrown back by a torrent of snow the likes of which she had never seen. Within moments, the snow had broken out of the basement and covered all of Canterlot and then Equestria and then the world. Celestia could only manage one word.
“Whoops.”
I love when someone spills 2015 into my 2024 new stories box!
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I'm out to break the record for longest time between updates
This is one of the stories of all time
Thanks.
Ah yes, exquisite vintage horse words with a distinct fruity top note
Yo, reading a story from the depths of the 2015 artistic landscape got me like:
m.media-amazon.com/images/I/A1sPEMK5meL._UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg
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Ah yes, my blood is on the dance floor right now.
And then what happened? You can't leave us on this cliffhanger!
A story from before I was even in the fandom emerging from the depths! Aaaaaaa! (Also you're awesome!)
Bitchin'.
Well, more accurately, probably just heavily irradiate it. Really the only way a nuclear fission reactor could explode is if it overheats its coolant and turns it into steam so quickly, the sudden increase in pressure causes the reactor to more or less "pop" like overfilling a balloon (extremely simplifying it here, but that's basically what happens in a nutshell). And that happening and how big a "pop" one gets depends on a whole wide array of factors, the reactor's overall size and yield being critical ones, and since this is all for a fridge, I assume Celestia isn't using a full-scale fission reactor anyway and thus limited in scope.
...then again, she is looking to make "the coolest fridge of all time" here and has no sense of limits, so...
Anyway, such a steam explosion would be enough to take out the reactor itself and maybe some of the things immediately around it (so in this case, Celestia, Twilight, and probably the basement they're sitting in) but the rest of Canterlot would be much more in danger of the extreme amounts of radiation leaking from the by-now-exposed and out of control reactor core than the initial steam explosion.
This has been another episode of "Scyphi Hyperanalyzes Something That Was Never Meant To Be That Analyzed." Thank you for watching.
In other news, Equestria clearly isn't going to be running out of snow anytime soon.
Any thoughts on last February’s Season 5 trailer? Don't ask me why, but I have a gut feeling that the pink unicorn at the 0:46 mark is going to be a really big deal.
Okay, all obligatory worn-out timeframe jokes aside, this was a pleasantly goofy little read! My favorite part's split between Twilight's exasperated "Fine, whatever, blow up Canterlot" and the perfectly comedically timed sequence of run-on "and then"s that caps the whole thing off. Hats off to you and your circa-2015 self! :)
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It's not just steam explosions. In extremely unusual accidents like at SL-1, a combination of design flaws and operator error can cause a fission reactor to go prompt critical (kind of like what happens in a fission bomb). The potency of the explosion may be further increased if molten metals (like aluminum) contact and react with the water coolant, producing large quantities of hydrogen gas in a confined space, which then ignites and explodes. Kyle Hill has some great videos on SL-1 and other nuclear accidents if you want to know more.
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Like I said, I was extremely oversimplifying there, as there are, as you say, some exceptions, but those are rare and usually under highly unusual circumstances or brought about by specific design flaws, which I figured weren't going to be relevant to the fanfic.
In any case, my intent was more to clarify that any explosions wouldn't be from the nuclear reaction itself exploding and even then it would mostly destroy/damage just the reactor and it's immediate surroundings and not any whole cities that happen to be nearby--it's not like any nuclear fission reactor would suddenly become a nuclear bomb and produce a Hiroshima-esque nuclear explosion the moment something goes wrong, as the fanfic was implying (albeit jokingly, hence my admission to over-analyzing). So I really just wanted to make clear there would be no nuclear explosions leveling Canterlot here, more just exposing it to a whole lot of radiation leaking from an exposed core caught in a runaway meltdown reaction that'd be leftover after any and all explosions, assuming there are any explosions at all (as a reactor melting down doesn't guarantee one).
But yes, ditto on Kyle Hill having some great videos on these sort of subjects for all those interested--it's where I've been learning a lot on this subject myself as of late and made me realize how much the dangers of nuclear reactors really are rather exaggerated by the general public, among other things.
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Who would've thought publishing a random story after 9 years would teach me so much about nuclear reactors and how they melt down
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I'm sure they'll find some ridiculous way to integrate her into the main cast, and everyone will complain.
I'm glad you liked the story by the way! I'm honestly unsure why I never published it.
Glad I finally have time to read this. It took me 9 years to get through My Little Dashie and this was next on my list.
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So true
Nobody:
Fimfic: Here's a fanfic that has not been updated for 9 yeas in featured!
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I aim to please
This story is pure unhinged chaos and it’s awesome!
That was a great story, and it's cool that you wrote it over 9 years ago.
Guess Celestia created a different kind of snow (as in, actual snow) than what was expected from her endeavors.
What I mean is, there was no "snow".
Radioactive fallout.