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> My favorite "invention" of that form is the water heater "booster" ball This sounds super cool! what happens if people e.g. go on vacation for 3 months? woul
by slimsag 10y ago
> My favorite "invention" of that form is the water heater "booster" ball
This sounds super cool! what happens if people e.g. go on vacation for 3 months? would it explode the heater or melt through the ball..?
do you have any other links/info about it you can give me? I'm super curious about it. I googled moderately but I only found some seemingly unrelated things[1]
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2013/02/22/nasa-a-nuclear-reactor-to-replace-your-water-heater/#7b4faf433ba3 http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2013/02/22/nasa-a-nu...
- leeoniya 10y agoif there's any water left in that water heater after a couple hours and it didnt explode from vapor overpressure, you'll painfully die of acute radiation sickness. that's the best case scenario.
- icantdrive55 10y agoBy law, all water heaters need a regulator pressure valve. (Before this federal requirement; some people had rocket in their garage. Middle of the night a water heater would go through the roof, if the homeowner was lucky.). In this case, I would want four regulators, on my nuclear hydronic heater.
- leeoniya 10y agolaws have to ruin all the fun. hopefully there aren't any pesky laws preventing spent nuclear fuel from being used for DIY residential heating.
- conjectures 10y agoYeah, we should definitely let the free market determine the natural safety appetite of citizens ;)
- fencepost 10y agoHmm, I wonder if you could use one of those in place of a pahr splah.
- fencepost 10y agoBah, Philistines. Don't you people ever google unrecognized terms?
- bbcbasic 10y agoI like the idea of having to type 6 numbers (yes those numbers!) into a computer to release the pressure.
- bglusman 10y agoer... which numbers? can someone expand on this?
- handojin 10y agoLost. Old TV show. Netflix maybe?
- Warp__ 10y agoI think he means the 000000 that the USAF set the password to for launching the LGM-30 Minuteman ICBM. For expediency, apparently.
- croon 10y agoWow, that hit me right in the feeling-old-shin. I gave up on it between season 2 and 3, thinking I'd get back to it sometime. Didn't realize it's become an "old TV show", but I suppose you're right.
- shostack 10y agoThis sounds like something out of "Chemicals I won't work with."
- leeoniya 10y agoyeah, also fun: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core
- serg_chernata 10y agoInteresting read. Can someone explain why they were performing these experiments in blue jeans and shirts?
- bb611 10y agoIt was the 1940's and nuclear material safety wasn't as critical an issue as it is now.
- ChuckMcM 10y agoYou over estimate the decay heat in a kg of spent fuel. According to here [1], a 1GW (1000MW) plant uses 100 Metric tons of fuel, so 1 kg is responsible for 1G/100K or 10Kwatts and the decay heat of spent fuel is .1% of its nominal power level so 10K * .001 or 10 watts. If you dump 10 watts into your water heater it will get hotter and depending on the heat insulation of the tank it might even get to boiling. Although typically I would expect a tank to lose close to 10W into the ambient air once the water was at temperature. [1] http://www.nucleartourist.com/basics/hlwaste.htm http://www.nucleartourist.com/basics/hlwaste.htm
- leeoniya 10y agoNo argument, though it's hard to envision a scenario where [1] is not a predetermined eventuality for any setup that would be laughably inadequate or economically impractical. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_units_4,_5_and_6#Spent_fuel_pool https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_units_4,_5...
- ChuckMcM 10y agoIt doesn't follow, fuel (whether spent or not), is density and dissipation question. Each kg of fuel is generating heat, so more fuel in a smaller space means more heat in a smaller space. Fukishima's spent fuel ponds had both spent and fresh fuel in them (reactor 4 was undergoing maintenance) and there was a lot of it. Spread that fuel out across say a hectare pool of water that is 5 meters deep and it stays out of trouble. One disposal plan called for mixing the fuel with silica to create glass bricks. By spreading the fuel mixture to a density that was low enough to allow the ambient air to cool it, the bricks are shelf stable for thousands of years and not a radiation hazard (less of a risk than even natural uranium deposits you might come across). Many disposal plans were like this, encapsulate the spent fuel into a container that withstands (and blocks) the radiation while conducting enough heat to avoid changing the properties of the material over the lifetime of its storage. Glass and austenitic stainless are both good candidates for that material.
- leeoniya 10y ago
- marcosdumay 10y agoI'd hope there would be only alpha and betta emitters on the ball. Who would ever transport neutron and gamma radiation out of confinement? I would also hope it would be dimensioned for radiation cooling when over 100°C. Still wouldn't want people to have those at home anywhere near me. But it's mostly because of misuse, not because of operational dangers.
- aminorex 10y agoSlow neutrons aren't so bad. May as well get used to them, as they will be around for a while.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ChuckMcM 10y agoOn vacation, presumably you would use a water heater that allowed for recirculating in cold water if it got over temp, presumably you could even open a radiator loop for that. The goal is to have something that is thermally stable sitting out in the open air and still can warm water to a usefully warm temperature. There was a discussion of this sort of thing in the papers on the pebble bed reactor (that reactor uses encased fuel "pebbles" and one question came up with what you do with the "used up" ones.) It has come up off and on both at conferences and in discussion forums.