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There is a technique for finding nuclear submarines from space by using satellites to look for the hot water exhaust from the nuclear reactors.
by changoplatanero 5y ago
There is a technique for finding nuclear submarines from space by using satellites to look for the hot water exhaust from the nuclear reactors.
- NovemberWhiskey 5y agoLet me get this straight - there's a technique for detecting changes in the surface temperature of the water from a submarine that's probably hundreds of meters below the surface?
- willvarfar 5y agoYes. There are also magnetic anomaly detectors (MAD) and various wake detection approaches. Do these work all always? Probably not. But they work often enough to be researched and used. https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC9bMgCQyFNaMPsK9GtzM5dQ https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC9bMgCQyFNaMPsK9GtzM5dQ is a good starting point.
- NovemberWhiskey 5y agoThat's an entire YouTube channel. Where in this mess of videos can I find a reference to thermal detection of submerged submarines, please?
- hindsightbias 5y agoClosed cycle steam generation plants aren't going to exhaust much. They can't filter seawater fast enough for use and you couldn't run seawater through those systems w/o messing them up. Wastewater is probably cooled before release.
- cryptonector 5y agoSubs must necessarily produce heat. That heat has to go into the surrounding (usually very cold) water. This is unavoidable. Those nuclear reactors are cooled with that surrounding water, though obviously through heat exchangers.
- postalrat 5y agoWouldn't cooling something with water warm up the water?
- hindsightbias 5y agoIf it sat still for hours and a shallow depth, thermodynamics is thermodynamics. Very different from the idea of passing tons of seawater through a reactor and dumping it out. It's not like a jet engine flying through the sky.