4 ms·
Yep a simple WOG value you can buy for $9 dollars at home depot costs $500 dollars after it is certified and tested and approved for use in a plant.
by jswizzy 7y ago
Yep a simple WOG value you can buy for $9 dollars at home depot costs $500 dollars after it is certified and tested and approved for use in a plant.
- mikepurvis 7y agoDoesn't SpaceX sidestep a bunch of this stuff by achieving reliability via redundancy instead? Like, put three valves in series when it needs to fail closed, and three in parallel when it need to fail open, that kind of thing. I wonder if there's potential for a similar approach here?
- NegativeK 7y agoA rocket total failure has a more obvious, bounded cost that's lower than a reactor failure.
- jyounker 7y agoMy understanding from a friend who worked on nuclear subs was that transmutation due to radiation is what makes working with reactors so complicated and error prone. You can't assume anything about common tools and materials since the metallurgy becomes quite important in ways that we're not used to.
- pfdietz 7y agoWell, tools better not be exposed to much neutron radiation, or else the person holding the tools will be in trouble. :) What he may have been talking about is activation of troublesome elements that cause contamination that interferes with access. A prime example of this is the wear resistant alloy Stellite, used in valve seats. It's an alloy of cobalt. Some cobalt does wear off, gets circulated through the reactor, and is transmuted to 60Co, which increases the radiation field around all the piping. All the materials in your reactor that are exposed to neutrons need to be purged of troublesome trace elements that can cause this sort of activation.
- jhayward 7y agoSo do aircraft parts. It's easy to find $400 screws, for instance, for aircraft. It has to do with strict traceability, design validation, and testing-proven performance more than it does anything about nuclear aspects.