While reading the "Steampunk" entry on TV Tropes, two quotes stood out for me:
And an idea occurred to me: Is there anything that prevents a society with 1890's-level technology from discovering how nuclear fission works, and how to build a working nuclear reactor? And if so, could we have a world that, instead of transitioning from steam to internal combustion, transitions from coal-fired steam engines to nuclear-fired ones? And how much could reactors be minaturized (I admit nuclear-powered steam trains and nuclear-powered airships are cool to think about, though probably implausible.)
However, any Victorian-era society which actually tried to create steampunk technology would soon find itself in stark trouble. The power requirements necessary to make real-world versions of steampunk devices (or at least Victorian-era versions of 20th century technology) would be enormous, and would soon exhaust all available supplies of coal and wood. A real steampunk society would have to either immediately transform into a fully modern society (with oil, gas, and nuclear power driving devices made of modern, lighter materials) or would quickly become, in all probability, a technological dead end.
Even today steam engines drive submersibles, tremendous ships of war, and even power entire cities. But since the water is boiled by radioactive isotopes and not by coal or wood, we tend to call them "nuclear reactors" nowadays. There's a reason they called the first Atomic Sub the Nautilus!
And an idea occurred to me: Is there anything that prevents a society with 1890's-level technology from discovering how nuclear fission works, and how to build a working nuclear reactor? And if so, could we have a world that, instead of transitioning from steam to internal combustion, transitions from coal-fired steam engines to nuclear-fired ones? And how much could reactors be minaturized (I admit nuclear-powered steam trains and nuclear-powered airships are cool to think about, though probably implausible.)