KSU Nuclear Reactor Pulse

[nummydoughnuts]

i would lulz and scream in terror if some one dropped a camera in a reactor during a pulse

[BWIENS789]

The blue light is Cherenkov radiation. It is when electrons or beta particles go faster than the speed of light in a medium. The medium is the water in this situation.

[deaftodd]

What makes it to glow blue? Is it really burning bright blue/white and it became more blue while passing through the water?

[geonerd]

"That was brighter than the last one!"

I can just hear his next line, "Hey guys, watch this!"

(Famous last words.)

Without knowing anything about this reactor, I do find that guy's remarks to be just a little too cavalier. It's a freaking nuclear reactor dude, whatever its power output, it deserves some respect.

[prcsouthwest]

@geonerd yeah, another of the greats  "look ma, no hands"

[timongarretson]

I'd like to add that the explosions at Fukishima and Chernobyl were caused by hydrogen that was separated from water (H2O) when the super hot cores leeched the oxygen from it, leaving only the hydrogen to rise and gather at the top of the container (the building or containment vessel). It's really only a problem when the coolant (water) level gets too low to dissipate heat and keep the rods at safe temperatures. - So they were Hindenburg explosions, not Nagasaki explosions.

[erikpienk]

The problem of nuclear reactor, like pdt1452 says its not the danger of exploding, its the risk of radioactivity, it wont explode, it will get how, it will melt, thats why its called a meltdown, but wont explode, the heat of it might ignite other elements that are volatile, but ull get radiation poisoning from the rods, no kaboom!.....

[antony1103]

It cost $2.8 to do that????  I'll take 10 lol!

[gigiboxa]

wi its have blue color



[kyismaster]

dont fall in guys...

[TheChuchulainn]

Environmentalists are such fools. They're against imagined anthropogenic global warming but they're also against technology such as nuclear power (which is far safer than hippies would have you believe) that doesn't produce carbon emissions. Dumbasses.

[TyrantRave0]

Why does everyone hate nuclear power? That was like, one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen!

[Soundninja200]

most people have the common misconception that a nuclear meltdown causes an explosion. this is not true; a meltdown is where the hot material touches the water below and creates a violent burst of steam. anyone nearby would be burned severely. but thats about it.

[jonydictado]

Why does it bright with that blue light pdt1452? I've always been interested in nuclear tecnology but I don't understant what's happening in this video explain me it please.

PD: I'm studying engineerig, maybe some day we could be partners in job haha!

[thebestsumoeva]

@jonydictado The blue light is particles traveling past the speed of light in water. The particles are released as part of the nuclear process in the reactor.

[TheChuchulainn]

Fuck hippies and their damn primitivism. Nuclear power is the future.

[BrianDavid79]

Chernobyl tarnished the reputation of nuclear. Standards that we hold any US nuclear plant to are 100% higher than anything ever done there. All you have to do is drive around an area with a plant, locals know what to do if an emergency arises. While radioactive waste is the shadow over the industry, every method of power generation INCLUDING wind turbines has the same number of risks if not more. Just look @ Sweden. Over 90% of their power comes from nuclear, and have never had an incident.

[b0rks]

how often do they do those pulses?

[lakewood85]

More Nukes, more nukes, more nukes!! I hate those ugly ass wind turbines and the stinkin coal plants. The U.S. needs more nukes, more nukes!!!!!!!!!!

[quicksilver8122]

if it is impossible for a nuclear reactor to explode, then what happened at chernobyl? cause that was an explosion

[Zentraleinheite]

I love the ripple.

[BrianDavid79]

I consider myself to be fairly educated, however... I'm kind of puzzled as to what the purpose of the reactor pulse is. I know that they use it to irradiate materials, but is that it or is there another reason?

[ArthrusGigawitAnteon]

@BrianDavid79 The pulse allows for an extremely dense and high level of exposure to materials. Such an exposure doesn't happen at the stable low power levels. The exposure can be used to find structural weakness in materials in nondestructive testing. And it looks cool.

[ExtremeShooter33]

Woooooooo, you sound like those things out of toy story!

[noahkeebler]

does anybody know why they dont just keep a consistant fision going instead of one pulse........

[ajpmathwiz]

1. Pulsing looks cool and can achieve power levels far higher than those that are sustainable (a 1MW reactor can achieve 4 GW during a pulse).

2. Pulsing is a fast way to determine the thermal feedback constant of the reactor.

[KarenGardener1]

Do you want to store nuclear waste in your closet ???

THEN YOU HAVE TO SAY NO TO NUCLEAR POWER  !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[pdt1452]

As a Nuclear Engineer myself, studying design for spent fuel storage, I can say I would be fine with nuclear materials in my closet. Besides, there has never been an death in America contributed by Nuclear Energy. However, workers die every year from constructing or performance maintenance on wind turbines.

[noahkeebler]

ok so i have learned alotabout this stuff and i am thinking about becomeing a nuclear scientist....do they make good money?

[cumesoftware]

WTF? Wind turbines don't have uncontrolled reactions. The worst thing it can happen is during wind storms if the control brakes fail. And if they "explode" they don't wipe out entire countries.

[pdt1452]

It is impossible for a nuclear reactor to explode. The physics behind a reactor and nuclear bomb are completely different. Besides a nuclear reactor is a giant controlled reaction. Most people are afraid of nuclear power because they don't understand it.

[cumesoftware]

Well, I was referring to the fact that a wind turbine can "explode" during an extreme wind storm due to excessive rotational speed and consequent centrifugal force. Indeed, nuclear reactors won't explode as an hydrogen bomb, but they will explode just like the one in Chernobyl. Entire areas were wiped out not by the explosion per se, but by the radiation.

[hathawbj]

Nope. Chernobyl was a RMBK style reactor, where the reaction speeds up as water is boiled off. All of the mainstream BWR and PWR reactors require the water for neutron moderation and slow down as water is boiled off and are thus inherently safe. No RMBK's have ever existed in the US and have mostly been phased out or retrofitted in the former USSR.

[peterrippe]

@pdt1452 chernobyl was an explosion.

actually 2: first steam blowing up the fuel; second the fuel going critical, which is uncontrolled self-sustained reactor

sure it was through stupidity

....but i would still support nuclear locally

[ArthrusGigawitAnteon]

@peterrippe The RBMK could possibly be the greatest failure at design ever. Combine that with a management system that doesn't work either, and you have a true nightmare on your hands. Is nuclear power perfect, no. But the mistakes that can be made are so great that we will always learn from them. The upcoming generation of reactors are so inherently safe (assuming they ever get built) that only sheer sabotage and malicious intent are truly capable of causing a meltdown.

[346L3]

@ArthrusGigawitAnteon The RBMK just worked, tho... The management systems aren't at fault in Chernobyls case, as that old reactor allowed for an "manual override". The automatic systems would never have allowed the disastrous critical state they drove their reactor in. The fact, that Chernobyl's other 2 reactors provided power for years after the accident (Chernobyl remained on the grid until about 2000, iirc?) and that until today RBMKs provide energy without accidents prove it.

[gordongate]

@ArthrusGigawitAnteon The RBMK worked fine, it was poor build quality and poor management. The worst ever post war reactor design was in my country at a little place called Windscale. Air cooled reactor core with horizontal loading channels that distorted under a combination of high heat and weight and a canister collection system that allowed very heavy aluminium fuel pellet canisters to drop several feet onto a concrete floor. look up the story of the disaster, its outrageous.

[Fordi]

@gordongate

It was also a design with a positive coefficient of reactivity. That is a problem, always.

[gordongate]

@Fordi depends how hard you push the reactor, the RBMK at Chernobyll was accidently run outside safe parameters due to poor communication and instrumentation, had the day and night shift had proper methods of handover, then they wouldnt have made the error they did.

The remaining RBMK reactors were run more strictly and runaway accidents have not repeatedly occurred since, as far as we know.

[m173627]

@pdt1452

Impossible? I'm afraid it already has. Have you heard of Chernobyl?

[ArthrusGigawitAnteon]

@m173627 Seems like both of you are right and wrong. Reactors can't really explode in the sense of a nuclear weapon. They don't undergo a great enough chain reaction to cause such yields. What happens is that reactors melt down. Their fuel undergoes thermal runaway until it melts and combusts, spreading radioactive ash into the air. Any explosions at power plants are steam or moderator explosions (Chernobyl used graphite) not nuclear detonations.

[Fordi]

@m173627 Chernobyl was less a power reactor and more a weapons grade material production facility. Positive coefficient of reactivity, no containment vessel, slapdash build quality, online fuel shunting. All features that say, "We're making weapons with this".

Worse, the US begged Russia not to build a water cooled, graphite moderated reactor: Water boils off, reactivity stays level, heat shoots up, and BOOM. LWRs are different. Water boils off, reactivity drops, reactor shuts down.

[MajorDiarriah]

@pdt1452 Or, because they were told to be afraid. It's why NMRI doesn't have the N for nuclear. 

[5KNIGHTP]

@pdt1452 What about Tjernobyl?

[effekt4]

@pdt1452 So Chernobyl never happened?

[pdt1452]

@effekt4 Yes, Chernobyl was a great tragedy. It was mostly due to the the poor Russian design, which did not have the same safety features as Western countries have. The biggest design flaw with the Russian RMBK reactor was it did not have a concrete containment structure. The containment structure featured on American designs is many feet thick and reinforced with #18 steel re bar in a helix pattern. So when the reactor melted down at Chernobyl, the fire released radionuclides in the smoke.

[effekt4]

@pdt1452 yes the structure flaws of the Russian made designs are partly to blame but you cannot mistake basic human error. This is why nuclear reactors are not widely used, in the end it all comes down to chance, we could argue the point for ever but in the end one mistake can cause the lives of many humans. Personally, i'm not afraid of nuclear energy, i just don't think we as humans have the capabilities of fully harnessing the massive amounts of energy it creates yet.

[TomozukiII]

@effekt4 RBMK is also quite different in desing compared to western or other Russian reactors. If you remove the coolant (water), reactor keeps on going and heating up because graphite works same as water which slows neutrons on the level when reaction keeps on going. In western design there is no graphite present, so if you remove the coolant, reactor shuts down. That is called positive void coeficient and it was declared as inherently dangerous for operation in western countries.

[cikenberry3]

@pdt1452 There are secondary explosions that would be caused by core meltdown which would scatter radioactive particles over a vast area. Also the core would likely melt through till it hit ground water thus irradiated ground water through out the local water table. Nuclear energy comes with heavy but unlikely caveats. Only people who don't respect those things are likely to receive the effects of because of their hubris.

[bulsatcomeca]

@pdt1452 ok it`s controlled reaction.but when it gets out of control you cannot stop it.this is a huge power and people think of it as a toy...

[scwam]

@pdt1452 What's your definition of explode? Then why why warnings of spontaneous ignition 5 years after chernobyl according a documentary found on youtube

[prcsouthwest]

@pdt1452 Except for those brave souls attempting to get Japans nuclear plants under control.

[suqies]

depending on what the fuel is, if uranium it is only 3 % enriched in reactors, you need 97% for a bomb.

[gordongate]

@pdt1452 there have been deaths in the US related to nuclear power and research into nuclear physics. Louis Slotin on the manhattan project 1946 or John A. Byrnes, Richard Leroy McKinley and Richard C. Legg in a reactor explosion in Idaho in1961 or Robert Peabody's exposure to a critical amount of uranium in 1964, Its just not talked about too much.

[nozdormuu]

@pdt1452 And in china ALOT of people die from explosions in coal mines :)

[effekt4]

@pdt1452 And a Uranium mine is the safest place in the world? How many deaths do you think can be traced back to mining uranium?

[pdt1452]

@effekt4 Uranium mining is no more dangerous than coal mining. I don't know any numbers, but I guarantee coal mining has claimed many more lives than uranium mining. Natural uranium is barley radioactive, it only emits alpha particles, and has an extremely long half life. Uranium only becomes dangerous after it has been in a reactor and contains fission products. Coal miners also experience small amounts of radiation, which pails in comparison to the danger of coal dust explosions.

[thebestsumoeva]

@effekt4 More people die from falling off wind mills during repairs every year than have died in US Nuclear power plants ever. Then again US Nuclear power has never killed anyone so it's pretty hard to beat that safety. Now go back to reading your fitness magazine and stop spouting non sense about things you have no clue about.

[effekt4]

@thebestsumoeva Since when did i ever say anyone died in a US nuclear power-plant? Since when did i say i read fitness magazines? And i think i have much more of a "clue" than you ever would.

[KLowD9x]

@pdt1452 Uhh...SL-1. A man died because of nuclear energy.

[pdt1452]

@KLowD9x This is true, back before computers and highly advanced safeguards. I was speaking in terms of commercial nuclear reactors. SL-1 had a unique design in that one control rod possessed a large amount of worth. Which would never be used at a commercial plant.

[Fordi]

@KLowD9x

SL-1 was an early experimental reactor built by the army, not a commercial power reactor. Comparing them is like comparing the Wright Bros. first launch to a Boeing 777.

[KLowD9x]

@Fordi He never said it had to be commercial.

[cikenberry3]

@pdt1452 3 January 1961

The world's first nuclear-related fatalities occurred following a reactor explosion at the National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho Falls, Idaho. Three technicians, were killed, with radioactivity "largely confined"

[Hbryant188]

@pdt1452 Wrong. Three men were killed in Janurary 1961 when the Stationary Low-Power Reactor Number 1 exploded in Idaho Falls, ID. One was killed by the explosion itsself when he was impaled by a water pipe. The other two died from radiation poisoning. One body was found in the reactor room. One was found near the control room. The third victim was found 15 feet from the exit door. He was rushed out alive but died a few minutes after. All three bodies were buried with the debris.

[Kamikuru77]

@Hbryant188 can you show me a link to this?

[Hbryant188]

@Kamikuru77 Correction, the three men were killed by the explosion itsself, not by the radiation so the govt says, but one of the control rods of the reactor went through the grion of a worker and exited his shoulder pinning him to the ceiling. The bodies were so radiated though they were buried not far from the plant. Just google "Idaho Falls nuclear accident." Youtube won't let me embed a link.

[t3hPoundcake]

@pdt1452 I respect your education and your reasoning, but I still don't want spent fuel rods in my closet. Haha.

[prcsouthwest]

@pdt1452 Couple of points to make on this, 1.) I am glad you are fine with nuclear materials in your closet, because i DO NOT want them in mine. 2.) If you live anywhere near me, i dont want them in yours either. 3.) Never been a death in "america" from nuclear nrg, there has never been a release of radiation on the magnitude of chernobyl or Japan in america, No one has launched themself into space on a home made rocket and died in america either, still its not a great idea.

[musicfreakcc]

@pdt1452 Actually, there were 3 people killed in the SL-1 accident.

[MrNickT]

@pdt1452 Technically there have been deaths attributed to Nuclear Energy. There have been many criticality accidents at fuel facilities, and a few other accidents (SL-1, Demon Core) which could be attributed to nuclear power. For commercial nuclear power reactors however, there have been no deaths which I'm aware of.

[mexicanerd]

idiot.

[ajpmathwiz]

Nobody's advocating nuclear waste in anybody's closet. Sensible people do advocate recycling nuclear fuel and burying the true waste on site, where it can't do any harm.

[DWaves47]

There are a lot of informed and intelligent people who have made comments here. However you are not one of them. Nuclear energy is safe and spent fuel can be stored safely. As for 3 mile Is. human error caused that. As a result reactors in the US have safety features that cant be overridden by the operators. Chernobyl, human error along with a bad design and a very dangerous test being preformed by a chief operator who was not qualified or trained for such a test caused that accident.

[ArthrusGigawitAnteon]

@KarenGardener1 Heh, you give me enough lead and concrete and it can be stored anywhere, even your closet.

[ArthrusGigawitAnteon]

@KarenGardener1 We don't have to store it our closets. That is just what hippies say because they don't understand it all, like most things.

[effekt4]

@ArthrusGigawitAnteon On average, a nuclear power plant annually generates 20 metric tons of used nuclear fuel, classified as high-level radioactive waste. When you take into account every nuclear plant on Earth, the combined total climbs to roughly 2,000 metric tons yearly. All of this waste emits radiation and heat, meaning that it will eventually corrode any container and can prove lethal to nearby life forms.

[pdt1452]

@effekt4 Heat does not corrode a container, a chemical reaction with the container wall will corrode the container. Engineers make sure the waste does not react with the container materials. And do deal with the heat, nuclear power plants place spent fuel in a cooling pool before it is placed in a dry cask container for storage. Finally, the container walls are thick enough to attenuate the radiation to a point where it is not dangerous for any "life forms".

[ArthrusGigawitAnteon]

@effekt4 Further, after accounting for pdt1452's comment, there are other technologies available and researchable to reduce the amount of used fuel. The fuel can have fuel poisons removed, re-enriched, and be reused in a power plant. Also, you can use the fuel in a fast breeder to burn off the harmful actinides which are the only real concern of long term fuel disposal while producing fuel (breeding) allowing for further power generation.

[thebestsumoeva]

@effekt4 The waste for one year from a typical nuclear power plant can fit under a descent sized desk, All the waste produced in 50 years from all the reacotrs in the US can fit on a football field. It's not the heat corroding stuff as much as building up over time. We can guarantee safety for a thousand+ years, but the government wants millions of years of safety. This came after they spent billions building Yucca Mountain.

[DonkeypunchKSH]

You should call this the second Manhattan Project. K-State is in Manhattan, Kansas.

[gethresh]

Cerenkov radiation travels fast than the speed of light, the blue lights you see are the neutrons, traveling though the water faster than the speed of light :) Awesome huh?

[r0zs0mak]

these aren't neutrons, but electrons (Beta-particles)

[shadowOrgon]

@gethresh umm. nothing goes faster than light..... subatomic particles like Electrons, neutrons, and protons travel close to but not AT the speed of light

[shadowOrgon]

@gethresh okay i just looked up that Cerenkov radiation and saw what a stupid comment i just put lol...but still it goes faster than light would through the medium its traveling through but not faster than light going through space

[coulditbekronau]

I thaught nothing could go faster then light

[soylentgreenb]

Firstly, waves have two different kinds of velocities.

If you throw a rock into water a ring of waves will form that moves outwards. How quickly this ring expands is the group velocity.

If you look closely the overall ring of waves(the envelope) contains small waves that start on one edge of the ring(from zero amplitude) grow and move across the ring and extinguish at the other end of the envelope; the velocity of these is called the phase velocity.

[soylentgreenb]

Secondly, the speed of light in vacuum is a constant c. Nothing capable of carrying information can travel faster than c.

The phases inside the envelope of a wave can travel at any speed, faster than light, stationary or backwards.

In a dielectric medium like water light is continually absorbed and re-radiated, reducing the group velocity.

Cerenkov radiation occurs when charged particles move faster than the phase velocity of light in some medium. It's somewhat reminscent of a sonic boom.

[coulditbekronau]

Thank you for shareing your knowledge

[PUNITRATOR]

@coulditbekronau While relativity holds that the speed of light in a vacuum is a universal constant (c), the speed at which light propagates in a material may be significantly less than c. For example, the speed of the propagation of light in water is only 0.75c. Matter can be accelerated beyond this speed during nuclear reactions and in particle accelerators.

[PUNITRATOR]

@coulditbekronau Cherenkov radiation results when a charged particle, most commonly an electron, travels through a dielectric (electrically polarizable) medium with a speed greater than that at which light would otherwise propagate in the same medium.

[Fordi]

@gethresh

Close.

Cerenkov radiation /is/ light, specifically, light released when a particle exceeds the speed of light /for a media/, in this case, water. Nothing travels faster than c.

[Pandddie]

0:01....waaaaah =D

[Plutoniumdog]

Ghist is pretty much on the ball. Cerenkov radiation is the name given by the researcher (can you guess his name) for what is refered to as the "Bremstralunge" effect. A beta partical has charge and magnetically interacts with the non-moving materials around it. As it does, it slows down. This slowing, or "braking" requires energy to be disapated from the system. This energy disapation is frequently seen as blue light. This phenomina is also observed in spent fuel pools.

[AKAtheA]

ummm, no....

Chervenkov radiation is caused by ionising radiation moving trough an enviroment with a high refractive index (i.e. water), because of the refractive index, light moves slower than in vacuum, however the radiation doesn't, so it is faster than the light (in the material)...the simplest way of explaining this is a anology to the sonic bang, but with light...

"braking" tends to produce much smaller wavelenght radiation, like X-rays & gamma...

[blueghist]

Cerenkov radiation

[blueghist]

I believe the blue light in the reactors is faster than the speed of light. :::)

[jeremy71991]

So the light is traveling faster than light? Lol... you are close. It is created by electrons moving faster than the speed of light in water

[blueghist]

I don't clame to know it all :)

That's like arguing partials and waves in light really :)

What gets me is the threshold that's set for light speed and nothing moving faster, it's not true.

There are things we don't know still or understand.

[gordongate]

so is the light emmision actually white but blue shifted due to the doppler effect as the light escaping the medium is travelling faster than the light in the meduim allowing the photonic emission to crowd together into a higher frequency

wave?

[KLONIME1001]

no itst he same. cuz its the light :D tehy are ll same!

[dieselscience]

It only costs $2.80 to do this?

[douro20]

Dollar in this case is used as a unit of reactivity. If you want to know what it means go look it up at the nuclear glossary.

[dieselscience]

Actually, I'm an engineer, that was for the 99.9999% of you tube users who don't know that IE: humor. Get out of the library more often.

[hans1066]

Fuckhead

[dieselscience]

shitbreath

[hans1066]

sorry. Looks interessting. Would like to study nuclear. Are you a major? Greetings

[dieselscience]

Hans, not a major anymore, a graduate.

[douro20]

Does this reactor generate power?

[douro20]

never mind

[KentiumInside]

yay KSU Nuclear

[mrpimp333]

Lol. my dad went to college there. Ive been to that reactor. To see in there, u gotta get up on top of the tank. the core is at the bottom of the tank at ground level. Oh btw is that a triga mark II or mark I reactor?

[mexicanerd]

id love to hang out with people that laught a reactor testing lol

[neurocache]

kirkmach32: Stop watching so much television, it makes you ridiculously dumb.

[kirkmach32]

Oh yeah. And while you're lecturing me, don't look now but you're watching YOUTUBE. What the hell are you talking about moron

[mexicanerd]

yes hes watching an educational video on nuclear reactors while u sit in your moms basement and watch that DVD of the Simpsons that she bought you for your birthday. moron

[jdmfreak1992]

all pay you 1,000,000 dollars if you dive in there and touch that with your hand lol.

[SpenzOT]

the medical bills will cost a LOT more than that.

Make it 20 million and unlimited health care with you footing the bill and we have a deal.

[jdmfreak1992]

lol!

[psychohitler]

i think you'll die before u get to do anything wit the money....lol

[wtfhellas]

wicked, first time in my life i finally get to see "inside" of one, not stupid 50's drawings on the internet.

[stelian95]

cool ! is it safe to stay in there?

[oobermate]

yeah. its fine. the water acts like a shielding to the radiation in the reactor. i am sure some radiation comes out, but it would be very minimal.

[ajpmathwiz]

A large pulse gets the audience a dose of at most .2 mrem, about as much as you'd get in six to twelve hours of background radiation exposure.

[Patriot314]

ya i agree ,what is this pulse thing

[madex99]

Cool. But what is a reactor pulse? Why do they do that? Someone please tell me! I've searched but there's not much on it that I can find.

[IOIOOIIOIO]

Cherenkov radiation. High energy particles released from the reactor travel through the water in the cooling/shielding pool at faster than the speed of light (in water, not to be confused with c). It's something like a "sonic boom" with electromagnetic radiation.

[milesontario199]

A pulse is when they insert a large amount of positive reactivity into the reactor, generating a rapid increase in the power of the reactor. Typical of these types of research reactors, the power excursion is self regulated by the design of the fuel (look up TRIGA fuel for a good example of this) so you don't get melting or damage to the core. They pulse the system to generate large transient neutron fluxes for experiments being performed at the reactor that require said fluxes.

[IHATEPLAID]

haha WOOAHH!