by mooninquirer » 31 Mar 2011 02:49
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.