So a nucler reactor is just a kettle with an extra spicy heating element?
Yes. Water + spicy rocks. Everything else is solar power, which is also nuclear power, but with the spiciness in the sky instead.
Fun fact. Coal plants release more radioactive materials than nuclear plants.]
Except the ones that blew up. Those ones were extra spicy.
Except, even then, an average coal plant will release more radioactive material over its lifetime than Fukushima did.
It's just Chernobyl that you have to top. And even then there are coal plants that come close.
Now, it's not apples to apples. Coal plants release uranium and thorium. Not ceasium and strontium.
But yeah, never go swimming in a coal plant ash pit. For more than the obvious reasons.
How many average coal plants per Chernobyl though. I suspect that number is surprising lower than the total number of coal plants.
Nuclear: the sky spiciness got too spicy and turned into spicy rocks
I mean, radioactive isotopes are formed in supernovae, so it's really just solar power from a different sun, right?
Not spicy. Everyone knows nuclear power is lemon-lime flavored.
Taste: slightly metallic, not great, not terrible.
A plausible Nile Red quote.
Cherenkov: The blue raspberry of nuclear radiation
That moment when you take a drag of your Blue Raspberry vape and the dosimeter next to you maxes out.
NICO is your friend https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NICO_Clean_Tobacco_Card
Most power generation is just steam spinning turbines. Solar’s just weird. Wind cuts out the steam loop.
Reflective solar is normal at least. But photovoltaics are weird. Even weirder is that they’re LEDs backwards, and the fact that transistors just are like that is why they’re encased in black plastic
Reminds me of the meme using the Donnie Darko psychologist template.
Donnie: I made a new form of power generation.
Psychologist: New or steam?
Donnie: Steam...
Steam implies water! What if we used some OTHER phase-change working fluid? :D
||(No idea what, though. my question is implied with a playful tone and is at least 50% facetious; any actual discussion that might result would be little more than a pleasant coincidence)||
You want to see weird water look up super critical boilers. That stuff was nasty. A regular steam leak will set things on fire. That stuff would explode a broom. We looked for the leaks with straw brooms. You can't see steam in normal conditions. Only its effects.
Blech, I've heard stories in my industrial automation days of people being clipped by invisible high pressure steam leaks. No frickin thank you, regular stovetop steam jacks me up frequently enough.
Well, now this is on my list of invisible things that scare me:
It seems you need to learn more about prions.
Molten salt?
We can then use compressed CO2 in the place of steam to drive the turbine.
The only truly new method of power generation we've made in the last 100 years has been photovoltaic cells. Everything else is just finding new ways to make turbines spin.
It was interesting realizing that a lot of our power is still, at its core, a steam engine
We discovered a banger like 400 years ago and have held on tight until right about now with wind/solar/hydro.
Still going to be using them geothermal/fission/fusion for at least another 100 years though.
Hydro is just more dense steam, wind is less dense steam, it's steam engines all the way!
The only really new kinds are thermocouples (mostly garbage) and solar panels (poor efficiency, but abundant fuel).
Some fusion might end up using magnet pumping, which is basically just a plasma powered piston.
Don't skip the betavoltaic battery, (or the brand-name: Betacel), which turns beta-radiation directly into electricity. They used them in the 70s to power pacemakers, since batteries were kinda shit back then, and implanting Prometium into people is just too epic not to do.
Nowadays we have tritium-decay betavoltaic batteries, on satellites, buried or underwater sensors and probably some too secret military stuff.
Mechanical engineers fist pumping after finding out their entire profession is not yet obsolete
This is reminds me of a quote from one of the Encased loading screens.
To paraphrase it "Power generation before was about turning a turbine with steam. Under the Dome we have this fancy technology that we use to.....turn a turbine with steam."
They just found rocks that are naturally hot and boiled water with it... Engineering is a scam.
We have rocks that do math, transmit electricity, and fly us through the sky.
When you get reductive about the natural sciences it all just boils down to applied physics which is applied mathematics.
But engineering and technology? Applied geology.
(/s because I’m not going to acknowledge that geology is applied chemistry and so on)
Nearly all power generation comes down to boiling water to steam which spins a turbine.
I can only think of two common exceptions off the top of my head. Solar is an exception and Hydro power is an exception ironically, that usually uses the vertical difference and gravity to spin the turbine.
Wind turbines also.
But some solar does focus it on a tower to make steam to drive a turbine.
Yeah, who would have guessed that modernity was invented by someone who stuck magnets to a fidget spinner and strapped it to a boiler.
Nuclear power is just steampunk with magic rocks.
God damnit Jinyang!
Errich, is the refrigerator running? This is Mike Hunt, and he's a rich.
Eric Bachman, this is your mother. You are not my son.
There are some fusion designs that use direct energy conversion.
Some work went into fission designs as well.
I heard that somewhere in the US there were parts of a nuclear power plant being delivered by steam train. So that’s basically one steam engine supplying another! (^^,)
I can’t seem to find an article about it anywhere, so it might be an urban legend :(
Nuclear power is the refining distilling and enriching of uranium into unstable isotopes and higher elements, boiling water is one small step in converting nuclear energy into electrical energy.
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