5 ms·
This is a more extreme description of why I hate plumbing.
by user3939382 3y ago
This is a more extreme description of why I hate plumbing.
- nazgulsenpai 3y agoAs someone who is currently in a game of cat and mouse with an intermittent drip from underneath the kitchen sink, this was exactly the first thing that came to my mind also!
- lotsofpulp 3y agoI feel like I would just replace all of it than play cat and mouse. Surely it would be cheaper in time, and low cost until you figure out you have to replace the whole sink.
- civilitty 3y agoGraduate and postdoc labor is cheap, pressure vessels are not.
- gus_massa 3y agoEven a new vessel need new plumbing to connect it to the vacuum pump (or pumps, sometimes you need one to to go from ambient pressure to low pressure and another to go from low pressure to very low pressure) and the pressure measuring device(s) and also sealing the holes where the wires go (I guess they have some sensor inside the vessel connected to things that are outside). So a brand new vessel means restarting all the seals from zero.
- finnh 3y agoi believe the comment you are responding was talking about actual home sink in GP comment, not the LHC =)
- nazgulsenpai 3y agoI have replaced the p-trap under sink already, but your comment actually got me thinking maybe it's a leak around the caulk seal where the sink joins the counter or faucets!
- Arrath 3y agoNo plumbing adventure is complete without 6 trips to your local hardware store, thinking each one is surely the last.
- johncalvinyoung 3y agoMy family (avid do-it-yourselfers, who renovated each house we lived in) used to score project size by trips to the hardware store, both proposed/planned/expected, and also actual. :P
- toast0 3y agoI had a bathroom sink where we put in a new faucet that had a pinhole leak in the tubing which you couldn't see when installed. Everything would look good, but the water would come out and drip down the drain pipe.
- peterleiser 3y agoI recently played this same cat and mouse game with no success, so I built a better mouse trap using a disposable aluminum foil cooking pan and a Moen water leak sensor. I put the drip pan on a steep angle and bent/reshaped it to collect water at a single point where I placed the sensor. I wrapped the sensor in a small piece of paper towel so that even a single drop of water would be absorbed by the paper towel and trigger the sensor. I tested it with a single drop of water from a syringe, replaced the paper towel to reset the trap, and eventually I got a notification in real time on my phone as it dripped. Over kill? Yes. But it lead to me finally finding the issue.
- pjc50 3y agoNuclear reactors offer all the fun of leak tracing and invisible cracks with the added bonus that the fluids involved are extremely radioactive and contaminate everything they touch. This is why all the "just mass produce small reactors" and "just try thorium / molten salt" stuff hasn't taken off, and may never: all the beautiful theory disintegrates into man-years of laborious leak testing.
- PaulHoule 3y agoLWR coolant is not that bad. They keep the water very clean with ion exchange resins because otherwise you can have problems with corrosion. Workers sometimes float in the water during refueling where they flood the area about the reactor and spent fuel pond and open the lid of the reactor vessel. Leaks in liquid metal fast reactors are much more obnoxious but still manageable. Sodium catching on fire when it hits air frequently isn't as bad as it sounds (a "pool fire" isn't particularly hot or dangerous but a "spray fire" can be) but it is important to catch sodium leaks quickly without false alarms and many development projects had trouble with that.
- yborg 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monju_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monju_Nuclear_Power_Plant I always enjoy the handwaving by nuclear enthusiasts. These are some of the most difficult engineering systems routinely built and operated by mankind, where a coolant loss accident doesn't just destroy the reactor but can turn the facility into a multi-billion dollar cleanup effort in minutes.
- PaulHoule 3y agoMonju was a poorly designed machine which was particularly badly run. I recently found a book they wrote about it and when I looked at the plans I thought "I can't believe they built that in an earthquake zone". I don't know if anyone is ever going to build another loop-type LMFBR as many of the problems you can have with a loop-type can't happen in pool-type reactors. What was most shocking about the fire at Monju wasn't that it happened but that they tried to cover it up. Neither that nor the incident where they dropped the refueling machine into the reactor vessel were dangerous to people off site but the latter sure convinced everyone they didn't know what they were doing. Contrast that to Superphenix where the fuel transfer drum failed and they struggled with a steam turbine system that was procured under corrupt contracts but overall had a good operational record. Or the three pre-1970s cases where there was significant fuel damage in the US but they found that a core melt in a LFMBR isn't as bad as it sounds because the iodine (most dangerous radioactive element in the fission products) reacts with the sodium and the NaI dissolves in the sodium so it doesn't go anywhere. Or EBR-II and the FFTF which performed flawlessly, or the highly successful fast reactors in Russia.
- allenrb 3y agoSeriously. It is annoying when some ancient pipe in my radiator plumbing decides to leak. This sounds orders of magnitude worse. The things we humans put up with to try and understand the universe!
- arbuge 3y ago...and central air conditioning. 2 evaporator coil leaks in my 5 year old house already, another one currently suspected.
- DANmode 3y agoWhy oh why doesn't everything use radiant by now?