They just found rocks that are naturally hot and boiled water with it... Engineering is a scam.
this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2024
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We have rocks that do math, transmit electricity, and fly us through the sky.
When you get reductive about the natural sciences it all just boils down to applied physics which is applied mathematics.
But engineering and technology? Applied geology.
(/s because I’m not going to acknowledge that geology is applied chemistry and so on)
You have to engrave special runes on these rocks for them to work.
I heard that some wizards on the remote island of Tayouan far east are very good at it.
Reminds me of https://xkcd.com/435/
Haha exactly.
I remember thinking about science hierarchy or levels of abstraction way back in high school, but I’m glad that (like so many things) xkcd perfectly documented it.
The nuclear batteries small enough for handheld devices that we've been reading about recently don't use any water.
Those have been researched and tested for decades and the tech still hasn't caught on. They just don't put out enough power to be useful for much more than a clock circuit (not even enough to power a full watch, just keep the time).
I have serious doubts they're going to suddenly become viable anytime soon.
Any useful energy production from nuclear is basically just making steam to run turbines. Same with coal but you know.
I believe they have been used in pacemakers, for example. They are becoming practical for more applications over time and are seemingly on the verge of appearing in consumer electronics. We shall see.
RTGs also do not use water. I suppose the watch batteries are essentially just tiny RTGs.
Conceivably you could use bimetallic strips to produce mechanical energy from the heat generation.
This is reminds me of a quote from one of the Encased loading screens.
To paraphrase it "Power generation before was about turning a turbine with steam. Under the Dome we have this fancy technology that we use to.....turn a turbine with steam."
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Reminds me of the meme using the Donnie Darko psychologist template.
Donnie: I made a new form of power generation.
Psychologist: New or steam?
Donnie: Steam...
The only truly new method of power generation we've made in the last 100 years has been photovoltaic cells. Everything else is just finding new ways to make turbines spin.
I've actually seen this same meme used in the opposite way where they did discover a new way but I don't remember enough information to find it. And I don't think it was talking about solar.
Steam implies water! What if we used some OTHER phase-change working fluid? :D
||(No idea what, though. my question is implied with a playful tone and is at least 50% facetious; any actual discussion that might result would be little more than a pleasant coincidence)||
You want to see weird water look up super critical boilers. That stuff was nasty. A regular steam leak will set things on fire. That stuff would explode a broom. We looked for the leaks with straw brooms. You can't see steam in normal conditions. Only its effects.
Blech, I've heard stories in my industrial automation days of people being clipped by invisible high pressure steam leaks. No frickin thank you, regular stovetop steam jacks me up frequently enough.
Well, now this is on my list of invisible things that scare me:
- Radiation
- Methanol fires
- Supercritical steam jets
- Carbon monoxide
The regular ones will kill you as well. Boiling water on a stove is nothing compared to steam under pressure.
It seems you need to learn more about prions.
- Predators with cloaking devices
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So a nucler reactor is just a kettle with an extra spicy heating element?
Yes. Water + spicy rocks. Everything else is solar power, which is also nuclear power, but with the spiciness in the sky instead.
Fun fact. Coal plants release more radioactive materials than nuclear plants.]
Except the ones that blew up. Those ones were extra spicy.
Except, even then, an average coal plant will release more radioactive material over its lifetime than Fukushima did.
It's just Chernobyl that you have to top. And even then there are coal plants that come close.
Now, it's not apples to apples. Coal plants release uranium and thorium. Not ceasium and strontium.
But yeah, never go swimming in a coal plant ash pit. For more than the obvious reasons.
How many average coal plants per Chernobyl though. I suspect that number is surprising lower than the total number of coal plants.
- Solar panels: Direct sky-spiciness to electricity conversion
- Wind: Sky-spiciness made the air move
- Hydroelectric: Sky-spiciness lifted the water up, gravity brings it down
- Fossil fuels: Really old stored sky-spiciness from ancient plants
Nuclear: the sky spiciness got too spicy and turned into spicy rocks
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Most power generation is just steam spinning turbines. Solar’s just weird. Wind cuts out the steam loop.
What about hydro electric? It uses cold steam
Ooh, cold steam burns are the worst!
Reflective solar is normal at least. But photovoltaics are weird. Even weirder is that they’re LEDs backwards, and the fact that transistors just are like that is why they’re encased in black plastic
Unless you WANT your transistor to be this way and use it so you put an actual led inside the plastic as well to mess with (i.e. turn on and off) the transistor!
Also I would argue that wind could also be considered 'steam' turning a turbine. It's just vapour pressure 'steam' with a LOT of other pollutants which somehow increase the efficiency!
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It was interesting realizing that a lot of our power is still, at its core, a steam engine
We discovered a banger like 400 years ago and have held on tight until right about now with wind/solar/hydro.
Still going to be using them geothermal/fission/fusion for at least another 100 years though.
Hydro is just more dense steam, wind is less dense steam, it's steam engines all the way!
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Nuclear power is just steampunk with magic rocks.
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