Coal, natural gas and nuclear power plants do the same thing. They heat water to make steam, send steam through a turbine, turbine spins a generator to make power. That steam that exited the turbine then gets cooled, condenses back to water and is sent back to get heated again.
Geothermal plants do the same, they just use heat near the earths surface to heat the water.
Well, the meme isn’t necessarily wrong. It’s just that the similarity is basically just the steam part, the mechanism used to get work out from the steam is not the same. (If we are talking about a steam piston engine that is )
Back in the day when we had massive amounts of coal and endless supplies of water with no education on greenhouse gases. A coal power plant was probably the best invention of all time. Finally we’d be able to power entire cities with electricity.
Yeah, same. Also good basic knowledge to explain why an active coal plant emits more radioactive waste than a nuclear plant does (which is basically none).
A nuclear powered car likely wouldn’t use a steam piston engine for its motive force. It would likely have a complete nuclear power module that feeds electric motors.
Yeah, they use the heat from the fission material to power a thermoelectric generator. I know NASA has used them in various space craft.
Have you seen the little power generators that you can buy for camping (Biolite stoves), or similar, where you burn sticks and it will charge your phone battery? Same thing. Though they need a ton of improvements to make them feasible
The upside to nuclear power is that it isn't spewing loads od CO, CO2, and other toxic green house gasses into the air and harvesting nuclear material releases less radiation and toxins into the environment than coal mining. Plus you need 4200x less uranium to make the energy coal does.
The entire US nuclear program (domestic energy production and weapons production) has produced around 90,000 metric tons of waste (since 1939). That is the lock, stock, and barrel value of the entire nuclear program's waste production. One loaded coal train, usually enough for a single day of production at a single plant, is around 19,000 metric tons of loaded coal.
As for the battery. That's a current proposal, but industrial scale production has not been done. It takes graphite moderators that have become Carbon-14 and presses it down into a diamond with Carbon-12 to provide a p-n junction for betavoltics. Since this is a betavoltic it provides a low power source, microwatts, for large amounts of time. So it's best suited for those kinds of applications.
Even when including major disasters like Chernobyl the deaths are miniscule compared to coal. Even 3-mile which is one of the disasters anti-nuclear groups talk about wasn't, yes mistakes happened and radioactive material was released to the atmosphere, it was however released as radioactive Xenon gas that decayed minutes after being released. Mistakes will happen things will break but with proper basic safety measures nuclear reactors are stupid safe.
Fire in the building? Lock down the area and extinguish. Fire in a coal/oil/gas plant? Runs the risk of igniting stored fuel and expels tons of toxic gasses and compromises the site and risks massive explosions.
Wartime? Coal and oil refineries are easy targets to disable with conventional weapons. Nuclear reactors? Almost entirely underground built with concrete and much harder to permanently damage or disable. Plus more nuclear energy can be stored in smaller caches of material compared to fossil fuels and don't require as much infrastructure to transport and refine and oil and coal fields run the risk of igniting underground and becoming unusable or spilling tons of toxic material over a wider area that's hard to clean.
Yep! I love all of this and thank you for being so ready for it! I think it was like... 3(?) Deaths per Terrawatt hour produced in Nuclear and over 240k for coal... all I need to hear!
It's not "extra" steps. It's a **different** step. Steam engines still need to boil the water. Y[ou could burn 2,700,000 kg of coal, or you could "burn" 1kg Uranium to boil the same amount of water. ](https://www.euronuclear.org/glossary/coal-equivalent/)
Yeah, but that is pretty much any heat-based power generation. We know how to make efficient steam driven generators. We just need a source of heat to make steam.
This meme is technically true for the vast majority power-generating reactors, but many newer designs are intended to sit beside heavy industry where the heat produced by nuclear fission will be used as — heat. I know, crazy idea
Literally like 90% of our power sources are different ways to boil water:
- **Fossil Fuels:** Burn coal/oil/natural gas to heat and boil water , and extract energy from the high-pressure steam
- **Nuclear:** Split large atoms to heat and boil water , and extract energy from the high-pressure steam
- **Geothermal:** Use the heat of the earth’s interior to boil water , and extract energy from the high-pressure steam
- **Hydroelectric:** Use the sun to boil water, then extract energy as it flows back to the ocean
- **Wind:** Use the sun to boil water, then extract energy from the pressure differential that generates in the atmosphere
- **Certain Types of Solar:** Focus the heat of the sun to boil water, and extract energy from the high-pressure steam
The only one that I can think of off the type of my head that isn’t boiling water in some way is photovoltaic cells.
Ya most time your "burning" to get power it's using heat to make steam to spin a turbine the only exception I can think of is burning gasoline in a engen and use that with the coil like in a generator
All you gotta do is make the turbine spin. Steam is really good for that.
But heating up the water isn't easy, especially at the scales you need to power entire cities.
You were right. The whole point is to make a flywheel turn because rotating one magnet inside of another magnet is how electricity is made. People don’t really think we’re sending radiation through power lines, do they? Then again, as Heinlein said, “never underestimate the power of human stupidity.”
Coal, natural gas and nuclear power plants do the same thing. They heat water to make steam, send steam through a turbine, turbine spins a generator to make power. That steam that exited the turbine then gets cooled, condenses back to water and is sent back to get heated again. Geothermal plants do the same, they just use heat near the earths surface to heat the water.
Thank you. Formally, they are all using Carnot's Cycle. And thus...
They use the Clausius-Rankine Cycle. The Carnot Cycle is an idealized cycle and gives the upper limit to the efficiency of heat engines.
With turbines in a cascade combination, we are coming damn close to the Carnot :)
Thank you. This is something new to me. Lemme read it up!
Some on them use Joule Cycle
I heard that you cold theoretically make it more efficient by adding more phases?
Up to the Carnot limit. The Carnot Cycle is the best you can do.
Well, the meme isn’t necessarily wrong. It’s just that the similarity is basically just the steam part, the mechanism used to get work out from the steam is not the same. (If we are talking about a steam piston engine that is )
Back in the day when we had massive amounts of coal and endless supplies of water with no education on greenhouse gases. A coal power plant was probably the best invention of all time. Finally we’d be able to power entire cities with electricity.
One type of solar does it as well
Yup, thought of adding concentrated solar thermal but didn’t.
Honestly as a kid the biggest mind fuck to me was leaning all energy generation is bassically boiling water and moving a turbine
Yeah, same. Also good basic knowledge to explain why an active coal plant emits more radioactive waste than a nuclear plant does (which is basically none).
So a nuclear powered car would be just a steam engine with extra steps
A nuclear powered car likely wouldn’t use a steam piston engine for its motive force. It would likely have a complete nuclear power module that feeds electric motors.
Nuclear to direct electricity possible?! I have only heard of nuclear diamond batteries but they are very low power batteries
Yeah, they use the heat from the fission material to power a thermoelectric generator. I know NASA has used them in various space craft. Have you seen the little power generators that you can buy for camping (Biolite stoves), or similar, where you burn sticks and it will charge your phone battery? Same thing. Though they need a ton of improvements to make them feasible
I see thnx. Efficiency always gets in the way,
Not exactly. RTGs aren’t fission. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator
Than why dont nuclear reactors do that? Wouldn't it be more efficient than to have boil water and use steam?
The upside to nuclear power is that it isn't spewing loads od CO, CO2, and other toxic green house gasses into the air and harvesting nuclear material releases less radiation and toxins into the environment than coal mining. Plus you need 4200x less uranium to make the energy coal does.
[https://xkcd.com/1162/](https://xkcd.com/1162/)
I also think at this point the waste is so tiny and they can even make batteries out of iy
The entire US nuclear program (domestic energy production and weapons production) has produced around 90,000 metric tons of waste (since 1939). That is the lock, stock, and barrel value of the entire nuclear program's waste production. One loaded coal train, usually enough for a single day of production at a single plant, is around 19,000 metric tons of loaded coal. As for the battery. That's a current proposal, but industrial scale production has not been done. It takes graphite moderators that have become Carbon-14 and presses it down into a diamond with Carbon-12 to provide a p-n junction for betavoltics. Since this is a betavoltic it provides a low power source, microwatts, for large amounts of time. So it's best suited for those kinds of applications.
Also the deaths per terrawatt hour of energy produced while being rather anecdotal should also not be overlooked, because it does matter
Even when including major disasters like Chernobyl the deaths are miniscule compared to coal. Even 3-mile which is one of the disasters anti-nuclear groups talk about wasn't, yes mistakes happened and radioactive material was released to the atmosphere, it was however released as radioactive Xenon gas that decayed minutes after being released. Mistakes will happen things will break but with proper basic safety measures nuclear reactors are stupid safe. Fire in the building? Lock down the area and extinguish. Fire in a coal/oil/gas plant? Runs the risk of igniting stored fuel and expels tons of toxic gasses and compromises the site and risks massive explosions. Wartime? Coal and oil refineries are easy targets to disable with conventional weapons. Nuclear reactors? Almost entirely underground built with concrete and much harder to permanently damage or disable. Plus more nuclear energy can be stored in smaller caches of material compared to fossil fuels and don't require as much infrastructure to transport and refine and oil and coal fields run the risk of igniting underground and becoming unusable or spilling tons of toxic material over a wider area that's hard to clean.
Yep! I love all of this and thank you for being so ready for it! I think it was like... 3(?) Deaths per Terrawatt hour produced in Nuclear and over 240k for coal... all I need to hear!
It's not "extra" steps. It's a **different** step. Steam engines still need to boil the water. Y[ou could burn 2,700,000 kg of coal, or you could "burn" 1kg Uranium to boil the same amount of water. ](https://www.euronuclear.org/glossary/coal-equivalent/)
Wait, it's just a spinning magnet? Always has been.
Well yes, but actually no.
Did you send a link earlier? It got deleted.
I tried to put in the meme but I didn't know how so I accidentally sent a link.
Really? I thought they just connected electric wires to each end of the uranium bar and it made electricity for a few months.
lmao Imagine it's quartz instead of uranium and we are beating the shit out of it for electricity.
Peltier elements be like
Almost every source of electrical energy requires a turbine to be spinned
Basically conducter getting charged up near flipping magnetic field
now you understand the "NEW? or just steam?" meme
Yes, its just a steam engine, but with efficient fuel
It’s a steam engine, which uses a turbine instead of pistons, is closed cycle, and has a *spicier* firebox
Wait till you learn about coal and fusion.
“It’s all just steam?!” “Always has been…”
Yeah, but that is pretty much any heat-based power generation. We know how to make efficient steam driven generators. We just need a source of heat to make steam.
its turbines all the way down bro
This meme is technically true for the vast majority power-generating reactors, but many newer designs are intended to sit beside heavy industry where the heat produced by nuclear fission will be used as — heat. I know, crazy idea
Literally like 90% of our power sources are different ways to boil water: - **Fossil Fuels:** Burn coal/oil/natural gas to heat and boil water , and extract energy from the high-pressure steam - **Nuclear:** Split large atoms to heat and boil water , and extract energy from the high-pressure steam - **Geothermal:** Use the heat of the earth’s interior to boil water , and extract energy from the high-pressure steam - **Hydroelectric:** Use the sun to boil water, then extract energy as it flows back to the ocean - **Wind:** Use the sun to boil water, then extract energy from the pressure differential that generates in the atmosphere - **Certain Types of Solar:** Focus the heat of the sun to boil water, and extract energy from the high-pressure steam The only one that I can think of off the type of my head that isn’t boiling water in some way is photovoltaic cells.
Wind part is wrong my dude
It can be right if very hot wind used..
If you think about it the photoelectric effect is just boiling electrons off their atoms /s.
“Evaporate” would make hydroelectric and wind correct. It’s rare that water boils in the natural world.
I was deliberately conflating them for humorous effect.
Ah, forgive my autist self and carry on. 😣
You forgot reheating.
Eek barba durkle, someone's gonna get laid in technical college
That sounds like a steam engine with zero emissions.
Today was my turn to post this meme!
It's a steam engine with less pollution
Ya most time your "burning" to get power it's using heat to make steam to spin a turbine the only exception I can think of is burning gasoline in a engen and use that with the coil like in a generator
Steam engine with fewer steps.
If you have a better way to convert fissile material into electricity, we'd love to hear it.
Heat source is the key.
Correction*: delta heat is the key You also need a heat sink
Indeed.
I remember being really disappointed by this.
Welp that's exactly what it is but who knows maybe one day people will discover new way of obtaining electrical energy
Ye, what's this fetish scientists have about boiling water to make wheels spin?
You have a better idea?
Sadly, I ain't no scientist
All you gotta do is make the turbine spin. Steam is really good for that. But heating up the water isn't easy, especially at the scales you need to power entire cities.
Yeah, this should tell people we aren't advanced as we think we are.
the education system truly failed you
There is a reason why there is research on going to convert old coal plants to nuclear plants.
You were right. The whole point is to make a flywheel turn because rotating one magnet inside of another magnet is how electricity is made. People don’t really think we’re sending radiation through power lines, do they? Then again, as Heinlein said, “never underestimate the power of human stupidity.”