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266 Comments
- adremali, on 04/30/2009, -4/+209dugg for one page
- socomoddjob, on 04/29/2009, -2/+176No way Homer Simpson worked at one of these....
- ekbear50, on 04/30/2009, -3/+145The waste generated by 1 person living off of nuclear power for their entire life could fit into a 12 oz can. Also, the nuclear waste we know of in the US can be reconstituted to reuse 90% of the material. Unfortunately a nuclear arms treaty made that unavailable for the US. It's a politics problem not engineering. They already do this in other countrys ie France
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing
Please look at the statement about increasing the use of the already used nuclear fuel by 60 times.
Thank you. - ekbear50, on 04/30/2009, -0/+106Yes. They are control rod groupings for the reactor. Each color code is a different group. When raising and lowering power the control rods are inserted or withdrawn in a certain order. If there was a reactor trip ie shutdown, all the control rods would drop. The gray tiles are locations of the fuel assemblies containing Uranium 238 and 235. Also, the color coding is probably used more for maintenance purposes ie not putting the wrong control cables to the wrong control rod.
- KungFooJesus, on 04/29/2009, -6/+103"The nuclear fuel used is Uranium255"
They're YEARS ahead of us! - ekbear50, on 04/30/2009, -2/+94Nuclear power for a clean world.
- ekbear50, on 04/30/2009, -2/+86I design control systems at a nuclear plant.
- inactive, on 04/30/2009, -0/+76http://media.englishrussia.com/atomic_station/39.j ...
Yeah, and they have a really intense version of Minesweeper. - inactive, on 04/30/2009, -1/+61DDR
- XtheXlanternX, on 04/30/2009, -3/+57dugg for ads of mail order brides ;)
- Jektal, on 04/30/2009, -1/+54Dance Dance Radiation
- a007proxy, on 04/30/2009, -0/+49One of the most interesting things I have ever seen is a nuclear reactor "pulse". The one picture shows the glowing blue. During a pulse, there is a HUGE flash of this light, and then it just glows for a little. It is beautiful. Basically they remove all but one control rod, then shoot out the last one with air so the reaction can occur as fast as it wants. Since it was a research reactor at Penn State, there was something about the reaction that would stop itself without the help of control rods and could never melt down, I forget why. But you can't do this with a normal reactor, well, you can do it once.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I3JKYdGWTE
And the power it produces goes up nearly perfectly exponentially. They show us a log function of the power and it was a perfectly straight line. I cant remember exactly, but it went from something like 60 watts to 60 MW in .3 seconds. - StewVader, on 04/30/2009, -0/+46cerenkov effect is so awesome...
- rarson, on 04/29/2009, -0/+453 megawatts? That's clearly a typo. Nuclear submarine cores are over 150 MW.
- leviathan2k, on 04/30/2009, -1/+31It is kept in perfect shape. They sure don't want another Chernobyl to happen. And for the "old" dials, those analogue setups are still the most reliable way of keeping an eye on all the information. There also are the "new" computers (note the monitors in the middle), which display the same information in a more modern way - but in case they fail, there's all the dials as well. And because it just looks cool.
- overkill219, on 04/30/2009, -4/+321.21 Jigawatts!?
- monarch00, on 04/29/2009, -1/+29Can anyone explain the colored tiles?
- r1y23, on 04/30/2009, -1/+28Its weird to look at that place because it looks almost identical to Chernobyl's design, its almost like going back in time looking at pictures of Chernobyl before the accident. When you look at pictures of Chernobyl's control room and then this one its almost identical. Its kinda creepy.
And I just mean the look of the place, obviously its a lot safer than Chernobyl was. - ekbear50, on 04/30/2009, -1/+28Another "typo" imagine that. Typical Reactors built in this time period generate on an order of 3 magnitudes more power. 1,000 Megawatts or 1 GW. So, three ractors 3 GW not 3 MW. BTW that is 1.5 times the energy generated at the Hoover Dam.
- MJPana, on 04/30/2009, -1/+27appropriate username
- dygel, on 04/30/2009, -0/+26You can see more clearly if you look at the software screen near the bottom. The rods are arranged in 8x8 grids. That numbering, therefore, is octal. It would be counted:
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
And so forth. - novicechap, on 04/30/2009, -13/+38In Soviet Russia, nuclear power plant trips you.
- ZimbuTheMonkey, on 04/30/2009, -1/+26You don't know how that meme works, do you?
- ekbear50, on 04/30/2009, -1/+25Plutonium is created by a beta (-) decay of Uranium 238. Most (all) commercial reactors use near 95% U238 in their fuel rods and 5% U235. This is 'enriched' uranium because the Uranium ore that is removed from the ground is near 99% U238. They have to chemically change this U238 during enrichment to a create a higher U235 level. ie 5% in commercial reactors. When Plutonium is created in the core by the beta decay it is actually also used a fuel.
So, long story short, commercial reactors use U235, U238 and Pu 239 in their core. U235 levels need to be high enough (5%) to maintain criticality at the beginning of the cycle.
Fuel is completely different from the moderator and is used in the same way across the world. Moderators slow fast neutrons to fissionable neutrons. Most countries use different moderator process. They all have different benefits.
The only reactors that use very little U238 would be government or navy reactors which use highly enriched uranium or plutonium. This is because of size issues ( on submarines). Since this could create a bomb it is classified government or military grade. - jtinz, on 04/30/2009, -1/+23Russia has become more open than the US.
- Puttzy, on 04/29/2009, -4/+25preparing for onslaught of never ending "In Russia . . . " lines.
- ekbear50, on 04/30/2009, -1/+22Thanks burrows, I just try to keep the politics out of it and let the engineering speak for itself. People will realize that with plenty of regulation nuclear power can easily be safe and remarkably profitable.
http://nei.org/resourcesandstats/documentlibrary/r ... - ekbear50, on 04/30/2009, -0/+19Cooling towers were actually designed and created for coal plants and then later used for nuclear plants. Not all nuclear plants or power plants for that matter use cooling towers. Some power plants (in fact many because cooling towers are very expensive) will use water from lakes, oceans, rivers and man-made reservoirs to condense the steam needed to produce electricty.
- splendid, on 04/30/2009, -0/+19Click, click, click, boom...
- Frexxia, on 04/30/2009, -1/+19According to wikipedia the plant has 3 1000 MW reactors, for a total of 3 GW
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smolensk_nuclear_powe ... - splendid, on 04/30/2009, -4/+22Oh *****. They're running Windows!
http://media.englishrussia.com/atomic_station/29.j ... - dygel, on 04/30/2009, -0/+17That is not Chernobyl, no.
- trevis989, on 04/30/2009, -0/+16If its anything like the one at the University of Wisconsin, a pulse is when you use air pressure to eject your fine tuning control rod (lowest reactivity worth rod) out of the core (on a controlled rail of course), causing a large reactivity increase (prompt critical for a second). This causes your power to spike for a few seconds before you scram. The core at UW had four control blades and a fine tune rod. When we pulsed, you would hover the core around 100 kw (I think), eject the fine tune rod and it would spike to ~ 1000 MW before scramming back down. Amazingly you can stand on top of the reactor (these test ones are usually open pit) and watch the pulse. The Cherenkov glow from the pulse is almost blinding - something everyone should experience.
- sleestakslayer, on 04/30/2009, -4/+19Russian nuclear finest in the world!
All other nuclear are run by little girl! - INDOAZZ, on 04/29/2009, -1/+15And we thought TEXAS did it big...? Did you see all the other great giant structures the Russians built. Cool Stuff!
- inactive, on 04/30/2009, -3/+17Well, it could have been that not all reactors use U235. Some reactors use Plutonium.
Or it could have been buried because your commented just sounded smug.
When you say enriched U235, how much enrichment are you talking about? Also, does that pertain to pressurized water reactors using hafnium control rods with a negative moderator coeffecient (negative alpha-T)? Or were you talking about breeder reactors that used graphite rods and have a positive moderator coefficient? Regardless, not all reactors use U-235. Did you know that some use U238? - BabyWookie, on 04/30/2009, -0/+13In Soviet Russia, the meme mangles you.
- tburrows, on 04/30/2009, -0/+13thanks for the additional comments above, you clearly know a lot about Nuclear power plants
- ekbear50, on 04/30/2009, -0/+13Old equipment is reliable and easy to fix. Did you want your protection systems to be flashy or actually work?
- sandersdamnit, on 04/30/2009, -2/+15Hey they use American numbers over there! Wow, you learn something new everyday.
My cat's breath smells like cat food - leviathan2k, on 04/30/2009, -0/+13Those PCs are only additional tools for easier overview/control of everything. All the functions can be run without them, so in case of system failure they'll just get switched off and personnel will monitor the station old-style, with a zillion gauges and buttons all over the place.
- brownsin07, on 04/30/2009, -0/+12Where are the cooling towers I've been programed to associate with Nuclear Power Plants?
- w00tdigg, on 04/30/2009, -0/+12Life-size minesweeper?
- raw10, on 04/30/2009, -0/+12There's a research reactor at the Ward Lab at Cornell, and I got a chance to see it running once. There is no way that pictures can do justice to it: the Cerenkov radiation causes this extraordinarily surreal blue/purple glow. I've never seen anything like it.
Reminds me of that scene in "A Bug's Life":
Harry, no! Don't look at the light!
I-can't-help-it. It's-so-beautiful.
Zap. - kpsfire, on 04/30/2009, -2/+14There's no such isotope. The nuclear fuel used in reactors is actually U-235.
- ekbear50, on 04/30/2009, -1/+13This morning.
- specialcases, on 04/30/2009, -1/+12you mean arabic numbers
- dygel, on 04/30/2009, -0/+11Why would it be classified? You do realize that civilians run nearly every nuclear power plant in the world, right?
- pathouston22, on 04/30/2009, -1/+11The nuclear reactors at the South Texas Project are 1,350 MW each. These Russian reactors are 1,000 MW each. STP also has the lowest production costs in the nation.
/My dad works in the nuclear industry. - ekbear50, on 04/30/2009, -0/+10Thank you a007 for the clarification and a sweet vid to boot.
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