• expatriado@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    if it looks that hot, fission is pretty active and a lot of particles are coming your way. better put it under water and attach a turbine to the vessel, and a generator to the shaft

    • dellish@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Ahhh water. Blocks alpha particles. Disables magnets. Is there anything this wondrous liquid can’t do?

    • fullsquare@awful.systems
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      1 day ago

      this is how 238Pu ceramic pellets for space probe generators look like, no fission required just alpha decay. If it was fission, it wouldn’t need to glow like this entire time because you can just turn it off

      • girsaysdoom@sh.itjust.works
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        13 hours ago

        From what I remember, the water that is near the fissile material is in its own closed loop tank and has heat exchangers that transfer heat to another water loop that goes to the turbines.

        • mercano@lemmy.world
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          5 hours ago

          In a pressurized water reactor, yes. In boiling water reactor, steam is formed in the reactor vessel and is sent directly to the turbines. While in operation, the turbine area is too radioactive for human presence. Fortunately, the radioactive byproducts carried in the steam are all very short lived, so it only takes a few minutes cool off.

      • expatriado@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        my comment is oversimplified and partly joke, but nuclear power plants use mostly uranium fuel pellets, which are inserted in metal fuel rods and these into another metal container called fuel assemblies, before the are lowered into the water pool, so fuel and water don’t touch each other, and the vapor cycle is a closed system

        • wia@lemmy.ca
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          1 day ago

          It also only would contaminate the things in water and not the water itself if i understand correctly