[NUKELIES]

It has been speculated that they are "dumpload kettles" used by utility companies to create artificial energy scarcity.

[TVOW]

I dont mean to be boring , but i think they are what they say they are , just a means of boiling water to drive turbines ,using the heat from deteriorating nuclear fuel ,sounds perfectly plausible to me ?

[mooninquirer]

TVOW, I agree 100 %. I believe nuclear reactors are real. I see NO reason why they should NOT be real, and denying the existence of nuclear reactors does NOT help in proving nuke bombs are a hoax. The nuke bomb hoax is used as an excuse for war, to scare up money for military expenditures, and above all, so that Israel can blackmail the world with her "Samson Option."

The MORE we understand about the physics of nuclear fission and what is required in a nuclear reactor, the more we realize that nuke bombs cannot explode. Also, note that there are no nuclear fusion reactors, and nuclear fusion has never be produced in a laboratory in which more energy has come out than has been put in.

Nuclear reactors were produced BEFORE the supposed nuclear bomb, which, if anything, should be understood as a much higher technological threshold than nuclear reactors, and even Einstein thought that nuke bombs were less likely to become a reality than nuke reactors, in his famous letter to FDR.

[FirstClassSkeptic]

Can anyone post a good diagram of a nuclear reactor and associated steam turbine? I want to know where the superheater is. I have become obsessed with knowing where the super heater is. Of if there is one. And if there isn't one, then what takes its place? How does it work without one?

[FirstClassSkeptic]

Nuclear steam turbines uses wet steam, means temperatures and pressures are lower so the steam is not dry. Because pressures are lower nuclear steam turbines are bigger then conventional one. Reason for that is to keep same steam velocity on turbine blades.

http://onthispage.com/steam-turbine-cycle

So there is no superheater; they use the steam wet.

http://books.google.com/books?id=emUrAA ... er&f=false

Pictures here of turbines:
http://www.powergenworldwide.com/index/ ... tride.html

[FirstClassSkeptic]

And saturated steam would be consistent with an electrical boiler, would it not?

This shows to me that nuclear energy, if it exists, is a lower grade energy than coal. The efficiency of the Rankine cycle, and all thermal cycles, is determined by the temperature difference between the heat source and the heat sink. Evidently, coal can reach a higher temperature because a coal boiler has a super heater, and a nuclear reactor doesn't.

[mooninquirer]

I think they COULD use a superheater, but there is a concern about the reactor core overheating, and concerns of safety outweigh any inefficiency in NOT having a superheater. This does not mean nuclear reactors are more inefficient than coal, because the reaction COULD be operated at a relativity low heat, by a modest insertion of the fuel rods into the core, with the presence of control rods --- to keep the reaction slow, so it doesn't overheat. If the flow system between the water used as a moderator, coolant, and heat transfer medium ever breaks, then radioactive steam would be spewed into the atmosphere.

Also, there is a greater need to use only distilled water in the cycle from the first heat exchanger to the turbine --- and this means recovering the steam after it has been through the turbine, and converting it back to water to go through the cycle again. THIS is probably why wet steam is used.

A problem with nuclear reactors, as opposed to coal, is that the flames can touch the water to boil it, but in a reactor, there has to be an additional cycle of water ( helium is sometimes used --- its advantage is that is would have not have corrosive effects on the piping system, and it serves as an excellent moderator as well, with small nuclei, that will not absorb slow neutrons ) carrying heat from the core, to the heat exchanger, to boil the water. The temperature inside the reactor core should be about 550 degrees Fahrenheit, as I understand, which is much lower than the temperature of a coal fire. But an advantage is that it "burns" for a much longer period of time.

A nuclear reaction is a slow and gradual process, and it is going to take a long time for all of those nuclei to be hit by a neutron. Chemical reactions are necessarily fast --- indeed, the concept of a "chain reaction" applies best to chemical reactions, because the heat generated FACILITATES further exothermic chemical reactions between the coal ( carbon ) and the oxygen. But, the heat generated in the matrix of the fissile material or nuclear fuel, is IRRELEVANT to the further fissioning of nuclei ---- and to the extent that it causes a meltdown, which makes the fuel lose its essential shape, heat actually is harmful to a nuclear chain reaction.

A coal fire has to be pretty hot to keep going. In is actually quite difficult to get a coal fire going in the first place. I know this, because my father had a coal burning stove as his main source of heat for a secondary home he had " in the mountains" in Carbon county, Pennsylvania, home of anthracite coal. He kept bitching about the chore of lighting the coal fire, and that it should always be maintained. Further, businesses that use coal heat are sometimes very hot, because of the difficulty in regulating coal heat.

[FirstClassSkeptic]

Why would there be any heat from a nuclear fission?

[mooninquirer]

There would be heat from nuclear fission, because the products of that fission, called the fission fragments, would move away from each other as a result of the coulomb force of like charges repelling one another. The strong force holds the nucleus together, even though the electrical ( under Coulomb's Law ) forces of repulsion would otherwise drive the protons apart. I can't explain exactly WHY the nucleus would fission --- why, for example, U 235 would fission after absorbing a slow neutron, while U 238 would retain that neutron, but several days later undergo two beta decays, and become Pu 239. This might be because of my lack of knowledge that I cannot explain this, but it is also possible that no one knows at this point. But we cannot ignore the fact that the fission does occur. Enrico Fermi observed this, and so did Otto Hahn, and they both won the Nobel Prize ( on different occasions ). This was BEFORE the WW II psy-op of nuclear bombs. It would be really something if the bomb hoax propagandists were that forward thinking that they hoaxed the Nobel Committee, convinced Fermi and Hahn to have lied about their results, etc. Besides, this is a table top experiment that can be done by others.

Later on, I submit to you, Enrico Fermi took liberties that he witnessed the Trinity test. Maybe he rationalized that he wasn't really lying, because he might have witnessed the FAKE Trinity test, used for comparison ! Certainly, as a new immigrant, wanting to fight the axis powers, he wanted to do his patriotic duty, and if that went participating in a psy-op that would help his new country win the war, then so be it. Remember, during WW II, patriotism and support for the war was at a fever pitch. My uncle even volunteered for the Army right after Pearl Harbor, and he again volunteered to be a paratrooper on the D-Day invasion. He made it to the ground, but was later KIA several months later, in Europe.

The fission fragments fly apart somewhat, but they are trapped in the matrix of the surrounding atoms in the metal, and they thus cause them to really jostle around, or vibrate. The kinetic energy of the fission fragments is thus transferred to the kinetic energy of vibration of the surrounding atoms. On the atomic scale, the heat of any substance is the kinetic energy of the atoms that compose that substance.