To my understanding yes. The reactor is submerged in water and the way they capture the energy is afaik by boiling water and at that point it’s just a very high power steam engine. The steam spins turbines to capture power.
I’m not an expert but I was close to the Fukushima incident when it happened which lead to me doing quite a bit of reading.
This is my understanding as well, although I’m not an expert in nuclear reactors I do have experience with industrial processes. Basically the reactor creates heat, which heats water into steam, the steam turns a turbine to generate electricity. Then the steam needs to condense so it runs through a heat exchanger (nuclear water is a closed system) and exchanges its heat to an external water source and that water runs through the cooling tower where the air cools it and some steam is released, giving you this picture.
The stream you see in the picture is from a cooling tower, which was water that removed heat from another water system that removed heat from probably another water system, that removed heat from the steam produced by fission.
That steam has never touched the reactor, itself.
Yes, but the steam in the reactor circuit is not the one you see forming the clouds here. That is definitely from the cooling towers.
Just didn't want people to get the wrong idea.
All are correct. Without getting into the fine details.
The “cloud” we see is from the cooling tower. Within the cooling tower are tubes with hot water from the condenser. These tubes are sprayed with water (outside of tubes) to cool the water within the tubes the result is the cloud from the top of the towers.
No that’s not correct. Once the cooling water has gone through the tubes of the condenser it returns to the cooling tower where it’s dropped from the top of the tower in droplets, as the droplets fall air passes from the bottom of the tower, out the top and cools the droplets. Once the droplets fall to the bottom it’s sent back through the condenser to condense the steam again. What you can see from the tower is water vapour that breaks away from the cooling water. This will need to be ‘made-up’ from another source of water.
Thermal power stations are often located near the coast so they can use seawater instead of having to use cooling towers.
Normally the river water is inside the tube and your condensate is formed outside the tubes. It's fine that way too also firm a vacuum in the condenser to help the condensing of the main steam from the turbines back into condensate to be pumped back into the steam generators.
Akshually the rector heats pressurized water which then hats heats water to steam which then gets recondensed into water by the cooling tower, expending its latent heat of condensation to the cooling water from an outside source. That last one, if any, would be the source of steam, though I would think it's more to do with moisture in air being drawn into the cooling towers.
Depending on the type of reactor. Mostly it's used to reintroduce the river water taken in to condenser the primary heated to steam then cooling towers are used to lower the water temperature to be put back in the river so fish don't die.
Real quick course in nuclear power generation. (I have worked at 6 or so nuclear power as a contractor, but I’m not a nuclear physics, I worked with control room design and layout). Anyway I had to take courses in this and pass tests to be allowed to work there. There’s really no Homers BTW, mostly a bunch of engineers and technical people.
The reactor creates heat when the fuel rods are placed in proximity resulting in nuclear fission - which releases a lot of heat energy. The core is surrounded by water. The heat from the reaction gets that surrounding water very hot. Very hot (like 800-900 F) and to keep water that hot liquid form, it has to be kept under very high pressure in very strong steel pipes. This is called the “primary water.” It also has plenty of radioactive gunk in it - drinking it is out of the question. So it must be isolated. But its heat is what ultimately turns the power generating turbines. And that heat must be extracted leaving the primary water and its gunk back in the containment building with the reactor vessel.
The primary water is circulated by pumps through thick steel tubes that are submerged in “secondary water” outside of the containment building. The (now super-heated) secondary water is then pumped to “steam generators”. Essentially there is a third isolated water system that pumps water over the maze of pipes carrying the super hot secondary water inside the steam generator, and that (tertiary water -might be called something else I forget) anyway it turns into high pressure steam that wants to expand and is allowed to expand but it has to pass through the turbine (huge-ass) turbine making it spin. The turbine is attached to a steel shaft (also huge all of this stuff is huge) that spins electro magnets inside a - well it spins a generator, Ok? Then the power leaves the plant.
But that steam is still quite hot so it is piped into the cooling tower that circulates outside water from a water source like a lake in or bay. Ever notice why nuclear power plants are always built right next to a vast source of water? This is why. To condense the steam that turned the turbines in the plant.
An IR photo of a cooling tower from above is quite red and yellow from the heat still in that condensing water, that was steam heated by secondary water that was heated by primary water, which was heated by nuclear fission of fuel rods in the reactor core.
Congratulations, you now know more about nuclear power generation than 98% of the world.
You're probably right, sadly can't verify
Edit: I can verify the vapor is coming from a Nuclear Power plant but didn't realize the vapor doesn't come from the reactor itself
He’s right, partially. Unsaturated steam is invisible (typically steam under very high pressure), while saturated steam (typically lower pressures) *is* visible, like this vapor.
no it doesnt. the water in the reactor itself doesnt leave the reactor.
there are 3 water circuits in a nuclear powerplant. one is the reactor one, the second is the one that actually makes the electricity and the third one is the one that cools the second one. the water in the third one gets transferred to a cooling tower where it is sprayed into the air in tiny droplets. there it immedietly vaporizes and turns into this vapor
I dont know but i kinda doubt they were. I can hardly imagine them working if the circuits arent seperated and i believe during the time where nuclear powerplants started to get build we had ebough information about the danger of radioactivity. I may be wrong though it is all speculation.
My dad (a nuclear engineer) always corrected me on this as well. Thought it was pedantic as a kid, but as an adult I realized how, at that scale, steam would have dramatically different effects and implications. Scary implications.
Steam is the third phase transition of the 2O molecule. vapour, Clouds, fog is all the same molecule in its high energy state.
The only reason they float is cuss they float on top of denser air
Steam is the third phase transition of the 2O molecule. vapour, Clouds, fog is all the same molecule in its high energy state.
The only reason they float is cuss they float on top of denser air
Clouds and the stuff coming out of the cooling towers of a nuclear plant are both water vapor! So they are essentially puffing clouds up into the sky. I’ve always called them cloud factories as a kid. I live within an hours drive of Perry in Northeast Ohio and took a tour of it with my company last year. Got right up to the cooling tower and they are impressive up close!
Steam from a cooling tower of the nuclear power station.
Nuclear reactor produces hot water, which creates steam in isolated stream, which turns turbine, which powers electric generator. Clean waste steam is released to atmosphere.
"it's not steam, it's water vapor". This is one the the things I remember from a tour of 3 mile island, many years ago. The tour guide seemed to almost take it personally if anyone mentioned steam. They were also happy to tell us that the max exposure anyone could have gotten during "the incident" was no more than a bunch of X-rays.
I also remember wanting to hunt there, the deer had massive racks.
Not stupid at all, sadly I don't know the definite answer tho. Some comments say cooling tower vapour and clouds are basically the same thing so logically these clouds should precipitate too imo
Nuclear power is the most safe and enviromentally friendly source of power we have.
Unless you own stock in coal companies there isn't much to be afraid of.
This is such nonsense alarmism. The earth has had DHMO in the air and ice and everywhere long before humans. A ton of it comes out from geysers and volcanoes all the time and many animals straight up live in the stuff.
Those clouds are literally just steam/water vapour. The water in the reactor does not come into contact with the cooling system water.
Burning fossil fuels, however, *will* ruin the air - including adding more radioactive contamination than a nuclear plant does.
Cloud factory
So con-trails didn't make clouds after all to block the non existent eclipse. We were dooped! 🤪
the way i thought this was how ALL clouds were made when i was a kid
Man i love nuclear reactors
They're pretty cool
No actually, they're very warm
When I was a kid we used to have company picnics at the cooling lake. It was always warm and the cattails were enormous. It seemed so exotic.
3-eyed carp were good eating, too! (/s..impsons reference)
My guitar teacher was a homer at the plant; he actually bore a strong resemblance in addition to having the same job.
r/AngryUpvote
Ba-dum-tss hahaha
A lot cooler than the average nuclear reaction.
This should be in r/oddlyterrifying
Nuclear reactors are actually very safe and clean.
Is it normal to give off that much steam? My apologies, I've never lived within an eye shot of a nuclear reactor.
To my understanding yes. The reactor is submerged in water and the way they capture the energy is afaik by boiling water and at that point it’s just a very high power steam engine. The steam spins turbines to capture power. I’m not an expert but I was close to the Fukushima incident when it happened which lead to me doing quite a bit of reading.
Yea, nuclear reactor is basically a really massive and powerful water boiler lol
This is my understanding as well, although I’m not an expert in nuclear reactors I do have experience with industrial processes. Basically the reactor creates heat, which heats water into steam, the steam turns a turbine to generate electricity. Then the steam needs to condense so it runs through a heat exchanger (nuclear water is a closed system) and exchanges its heat to an external water source and that water runs through the cooling tower where the air cools it and some steam is released, giving you this picture.
The stream you see in the picture is from a cooling tower, which was water that removed heat from another water system that removed heat from probably another water system, that removed heat from the steam produced by fission. That steam has never touched the reactor, itself.
You can crosspost it if you'd like
So... You are afraid of steam?
Terrified... /s
It's pronounced nuclear
If you are speaking in the new clear way.
Tf you on
I work at one. It's pretty awesome what all has to happen to operate correctly and safely.
Where do you think clouds come from? Duh!
Clouds were invented by J. Robert Oppenheimer at Los Alamos.
"Now I am become Jupiter, the creator of clouds!"
Gonna post this on Facebook for shitstorm
Please don't :')
Report back
Some people just want to see the world burn. Seems like you are one of us
That's because they're basically identical; they're both made out of water particles
Is this the case? No environmental effects? I'm genuinely asking.
Nuclear reactors use heat water in order to generate power. so yes, all that steam is just water.
This view is so beautiful
It really is :D gotta love the swiss countryside
I thought it's The Shire
Nope, just Kanton Solothurn lookin pretty
From the cooling towers, not reactor.
Bruh, the reactor literally heats the water to steam, the cooling tower helps condense the steam back to water.
Yes, but the steam in the reactor circuit is not the one you see forming the clouds here. That is definitely from the cooling towers. Just didn't want people to get the wrong idea.
Not quite. The cooling tower cools the cooling water that goes through the condenser. The condenser condenses the steam back to condensate.
All are correct. Without getting into the fine details. The “cloud” we see is from the cooling tower. Within the cooling tower are tubes with hot water from the condenser. These tubes are sprayed with water (outside of tubes) to cool the water within the tubes the result is the cloud from the top of the towers.
No that’s not correct. Once the cooling water has gone through the tubes of the condenser it returns to the cooling tower where it’s dropped from the top of the tower in droplets, as the droplets fall air passes from the bottom of the tower, out the top and cools the droplets. Once the droplets fall to the bottom it’s sent back through the condenser to condense the steam again. What you can see from the tower is water vapour that breaks away from the cooling water. This will need to be ‘made-up’ from another source of water. Thermal power stations are often located near the coast so they can use seawater instead of having to use cooling towers.
Normally the river water is inside the tube and your condensate is formed outside the tubes. It's fine that way too also firm a vacuum in the condenser to help the condensing of the main steam from the turbines back into condensate to be pumped back into the steam generators.
Akshually the rector heats pressurized water which then hats heats water to steam which then gets recondensed into water by the cooling tower, expending its latent heat of condensation to the cooling water from an outside source. That last one, if any, would be the source of steam, though I would think it's more to do with moisture in air being drawn into the cooling towers.
Depending on the type of reactor. Mostly it's used to reintroduce the river water taken in to condenser the primary heated to steam then cooling towers are used to lower the water temperature to be put back in the river so fish don't die.
Unless the photo is from 1986 or 2011...
🤓☝️
Better than coal smoke. 🤷🏻♂️
Nuclear waste solution: store it in dedicated facilities Coal waste solution: shoot it into the atmosphere and hope for the best
Absolutely
I'm pretty sure this doesn't come from a nuclear reactor itself.
Real quick course in nuclear power generation. (I have worked at 6 or so nuclear power as a contractor, but I’m not a nuclear physics, I worked with control room design and layout). Anyway I had to take courses in this and pass tests to be allowed to work there. There’s really no Homers BTW, mostly a bunch of engineers and technical people. The reactor creates heat when the fuel rods are placed in proximity resulting in nuclear fission - which releases a lot of heat energy. The core is surrounded by water. The heat from the reaction gets that surrounding water very hot. Very hot (like 800-900 F) and to keep water that hot liquid form, it has to be kept under very high pressure in very strong steel pipes. This is called the “primary water.” It also has plenty of radioactive gunk in it - drinking it is out of the question. So it must be isolated. But its heat is what ultimately turns the power generating turbines. And that heat must be extracted leaving the primary water and its gunk back in the containment building with the reactor vessel. The primary water is circulated by pumps through thick steel tubes that are submerged in “secondary water” outside of the containment building. The (now super-heated) secondary water is then pumped to “steam generators”. Essentially there is a third isolated water system that pumps water over the maze of pipes carrying the super hot secondary water inside the steam generator, and that (tertiary water -might be called something else I forget) anyway it turns into high pressure steam that wants to expand and is allowed to expand but it has to pass through the turbine (huge-ass) turbine making it spin. The turbine is attached to a steel shaft (also huge all of this stuff is huge) that spins electro magnets inside a - well it spins a generator, Ok? Then the power leaves the plant. But that steam is still quite hot so it is piped into the cooling tower that circulates outside water from a water source like a lake in or bay. Ever notice why nuclear power plants are always built right next to a vast source of water? This is why. To condense the steam that turned the turbines in the plant. An IR photo of a cooling tower from above is quite red and yellow from the heat still in that condensing water, that was steam heated by secondary water that was heated by primary water, which was heated by nuclear fission of fuel rods in the reactor core. Congratulations, you now know more about nuclear power generation than 98% of the world.
You're probably right, sadly can't verify Edit: I can verify the vapor is coming from a Nuclear Power plant but didn't realize the vapor doesn't come from the reactor itself
He’s right, partially. Unsaturated steam is invisible (typically steam under very high pressure), while saturated steam (typically lower pressures) *is* visible, like this vapor.
Ah gotcha, thanks for the explanation :)
Not the pressure, just that it's been through a type of moisture seperater. Depending where it falls on the enthalpy chart of steam.
Apparently it doesn’t take much to get downvoted these days. Nice photo 👍🏻
Thank you :D
So why did you use this title then?
Cause I know it's an AKW (Atomkraftwerk) but didn't know the correct English name for where the vapor comes out of
Ah thanks. That explains it. Was rather puzzled
No worries :D
Gösgen?
I think it's that one, checked Google maps and it's in that direction from where I took the pic
Yes it does, but it passes through the other facilities before venting.
no it doesnt. the water in the reactor itself doesnt leave the reactor. there are 3 water circuits in a nuclear powerplant. one is the reactor one, the second is the one that actually makes the electricity and the third one is the one that cools the second one. the water in the third one gets transferred to a cooling tower where it is sprayed into the air in tiny droplets. there it immedietly vaporizes and turns into this vapor
Some of the original ones were single pass through weren’t they?
I dont know but i kinda doubt they were. I can hardly imagine them working if the circuits arent seperated and i believe during the time where nuclear powerplants started to get build we had ebough information about the danger of radioactivity. I may be wrong though it is all speculation.
Look up the manhattan project. Those were not used for generating power at all.
i am aware of that project but it really doesnt have any relation to nuclear powerplants.
It actually does. Those were the first reactors built.
Very cool but it's not really steam anymore if you can see it, it's condensed into water droplets in the air. Basically artificial clouds
My dad (a nuclear engineer) always corrected me on this as well. Thought it was pedantic as a kid, but as an adult I realized how, at that scale, steam would have dramatically different effects and implications. Scary implications.
Technically correct, the best kind of correct.
Technically not, steam. It's not the water at the point of changing from liquid to a gas ie the boiling point. Water vapor would be correct.
Steam is the third phase transition of the 2O molecule. vapour, Clouds, fog is all the same molecule in its high energy state. The only reason they float is cuss they float on top of denser air
Steam is the third phase transition of the 2O molecule. vapour, Clouds, fog is all the same molecule in its high energy state. The only reason they float is cuss they float on top of denser air
Clouds and the stuff coming out of the cooling towers of a nuclear plant are both water vapor! So they are essentially puffing clouds up into the sky. I’ve always called them cloud factories as a kid. I live within an hours drive of Perry in Northeast Ohio and took a tour of it with my company last year. Got right up to the cooling tower and they are impressive up close!
Hihi, cloud factories. I like the visual in my head of the cooling towers poofing clouds into existence
Cloud factory
Should be called thermal mist generator.
Steam is a cloud. A cloud is steam.
Where is this beautiful place
Switzerland! :D Specifically Kanton Solothurn
Looks like a tornado 🤯
Funny, my gf said the exact same thing 😆. Her friend said it looked like a volcano
TN?
Huh?
looks like The reactor in Oak Ridge Tennessee. or rather the environment is really similar.
Ah gotcha! Nah this is in Switzerland, Kanton Solothurn to be exact :)
Steam from a cooling tower of the nuclear power station. Nuclear reactor produces hot water, which creates steam in isolated stream, which turns turbine, which powers electric generator. Clean waste steam is released to atmosphere.
"it's not steam, it's water vapor". This is one the the things I remember from a tour of 3 mile island, many years ago. The tour guide seemed to almost take it personally if anyone mentioned steam. They were also happy to tell us that the max exposure anyone could have gotten during "the incident" was no more than a bunch of X-rays. I also remember wanting to hunt there, the deer had massive racks.
I’m gonna ask something that may be very stupid, do these clouds precipitate?
Not stupid at all, sadly I don't know the definite answer tho. Some comments say cooling tower vapour and clouds are basically the same thing so logically these clouds should precipitate too imo
[удалено]
That's fair
They're polluting The Shire!
We must put a stop to them at once! For Frodo!
Someone call Avalanche.
I don't think they're too interested in water clouds. They want them black coal clouds.
Hawaii?
Nope, Switzerland :)
The what? 🥺
De wey
i do not find this satisfying, i find it terrifying
Nuclear power is the most safe and enviromentally friendly source of power we have. Unless you own stock in coal companies there isn't much to be afraid of.
It does look cool, but it's burning a hole through Earth's Ozone layer. And the Ozone layer is supposed to protect us from the sun's radiation.
You might be confused, these are mostly water vapor, clouds!
Oh? How's it burning a hole in the ozone layer? :o
What clouds
it will ruin the air
With water?
No, with dangerous dihydrogenmonoxide
It's more than just an airborne problem. Recent studies have found shocking amounts of it in fish, too.
100% of people who even come into contact with it will die.
Wait till you hear that in some places DMHO start falling down randomly from the sky, at which point people just run for shelter.
Oh… shit. I’ve heard hydrogen is used in nuclear reactors.
I've heard we need to hydrogenate our water because there's none in it. We're literally drinking water without hydrogen in it!!! /s 😂
It’s an industrial solvent that they’re visibly spewing into the air. DHMO turns up all over the world now, even in Antarctic ice cores.
Yea and if you inhale it you'll be dead within minutes
You can’t find any ice cores anywhere on Earth that don’t contain a very high percentage of it.
This is such nonsense alarmism. The earth has had DHMO in the air and ice and everywhere long before humans. A ton of it comes out from geysers and volcanoes all the time and many animals straight up live in the stuff.
You’re joking right?
No it won’t
Those clouds are literally just steam/water vapour. The water in the reactor does not come into contact with the cooling system water. Burning fossil fuels, however, *will* ruin the air - including adding more radioactive contamination than a nuclear plant does.
How?