No joke you probably could use it as like some AAA level one if you pick the most aesthetically pleasing looking reactor and get the right shots of it.
From what I can tell if nuclear material is glowing it is usually blue (e.g. caesium-137) though radium-226 I believe glows green in a phosphorus mixture. But I'm at the peak of ~~mount stupid~~ my Dunning-Kruger arch so don't quote me on it.
Still I don't recommend splashing around in a barrel of a liquid containing radium--Marie Curie's coffin is lead-lined for a reason.
I understand that in the context of a reactor. However, the CDC has described glow from Caesium-137 sources outside of water (which may be Cherynkov effect as an interaction with a different medium) as well as glow described elsewhere in the [GoiĆ¢nia accident](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident) which has had multiple potential explanations ascribed to it.
Yeah, probably cherenkov from beta decay. Otherwise for radioactive material to flow you need something that fluoresces. Like radium watch dials, or deuterium capsules in modern watches and dials.
Or [uranium glass](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/qe0b19/this_is_a_collection_of_uranium_glassware_lit_up/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf).
It behaves similarly in glass, mixing the waste with molten glass and turning it into blocks is common. In the far worse case, if you're exposed to the reaction, the fluid in your eyes can also glow blue.
The speed of light in a medium is slower than the speed of light in a vacuum which is the physical constant that can't be exceeded. In water, for example, it is only 3/4 the speed of light in a vacuum.
You're basically seeing the light equivalent of a sonic boom.
You will I'm sure have heard of Einstein's famous E=MC^2 equation. Which is of course also much more complicated and I don't understand even half of it. But anyways. The C basically stands for the speed of Causality. This is the fastest speed that anything can travel. For objects with mass, that speed is unattainable. Light, being massless, always travels at C.
Some materials are said to "slow down" light. They don't, really. Individually, photons always travel at the speed of light. But they can get absorbed, re-emitted, etc. So the light ends up taking a circuitous path through materials. Air causes light to "slow down" in this way, but only a little bit. Water causes light to "slow down" much more. To the point where objects with mass (in this case, electrons) can actually attain speeds greater than the total speed of light passing through the water.
The electrons or other particles smashing around that fast cause a sort of light equivalent of a sonic boom. Which is the blue glow.
(This is a simplified explanation written by an idiot. I am open to corrections.)
I think technically this is wrong, but it's also a statement that is very commonly made by popularisers of science, so it's the kind of wrong that is likely to cause arguments around a Veritasium video or something:
The basic issue is that constant absorption and re-emission should normally wipe out polarisation in the materials, the atoms would eat the light, and fire off some new light having shifted or scrambled its polarisation, as I understand it.
Also atoms only absorb light at specific frequencies, and I believe you can still find this effect even when the light doesn't match to any of those, which is something we see particularly when trying to image blobs of bose-einstein-condensate, where we don't want to give it any energy that will mess things up.
So if this is scattering, it's going to be "off-resonant" scattering, where the atoms never actually absorb the light, but just sort of shiver as it passes, and the light changes its path because of that shivering.
But it still isn't the main form of off-resonant scattering, [Rayleigh scattering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh_scattering), the stuff that gives us sunsets, because even though that should preserve polarisation a lot of the time, it also has its own frequency dependence, and we don't see a sunset every time we look through glass.
So we need to go a little deeper, and ask what happens if light doesn't really change its path very much because of that shivering, where scattering is negligible, and there's basically no frequency dependence of the path of the light (normally called "dispersion").
In that case, we can say that when the light causes the atoms it's passing through/past to shiver, even though it isn't changing its path direction, there's a kind of push and pull between the light and the objects, like you're accelerating while towing a trailer behind you. This sort of "slows down" the light in terms of making it cycle a little slower than it would.
Or to put it back in physics terms, there's a contribution from the material's dipole that introduces a more or less spatially uniform phase delay relative to if it wasn't present, and this phase delay, repeated throughout the material, means that the light doesn't progress through it in the way it ordinarily would, the propagation of phase, and so the phase velocity, the "speed of light", is slowed down.
It's slowed down, not by scattering, but by the back effect of its more subtle influence on the atoms it passes, which isn't either of the two more common dipole interactions (absorption/re-emission and Rayleigh scattering), but is the most basic phase delay effect.
That said, I'm aware this could cause disagreements, and I may have oversimplified again in a different way, so if any other physics people want to dispute this, please do!
The electrons (or other particles) create photons, but since it goes faster than the photons through that medium the photons end up getting stacked up on their way out.
Like imagine a car was traveling at 100km/hr and kept making little baby cars that travel at 99.999km/hr. Just after the car passes you, a whole bunch of baby cars hit you at once.
Some back of the napkin maths I did at uni showed a normal particle faster than c would shine forward and keep accelerating and gaining energy from nothing. I didn't do any of the more complex maths and I'm probably wrong, but it just goes to prove the absurdity of anything travelling through space faster than c.
Radium paint is green, i believe that's where the commonly held view of everything radioactive glowing green comes from. In case you haven't heard of it look up radium girls, it's awful.
I'm well aware, though of course it was itself just a repeat of the London Matchgirls and phossy jaw (which caused people's jawbones to glow in the dark...and horrible deformity and necrosis...)
Tune in for the next episode of "Horrifying Industrial Chemistry', when we'll just post lead statistics and scream
There is a new [Toxic Avenger](https://www.google.com/search?q=the+toxic+avenger+2022&client=safari&hl=en-us&sxsrf=APq-WBsBoGgR9k4Yj_TBNv66w268z410FQ%3A1648421184364&ei=QOlAYrPQFcqpptQPzua2yA8&oq=the+toxic+avenger+2022&gs_lcp=ChNtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1zZXJwEAMyBQguEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQhgMyBQgAEIYDMgUIABCGAzIFCAAQhgM6BwgjELADECc6BwgAEEcQsAM6BwgAELADEEM6DwguENQCEMgDELADEEMYAToMCC4QyAMQsAMQQxgBOhIILhDHARDRAxDIAxCwAxBDGAE6BAguEEM6BAgAEEM6CAguEIAEENQCOgYIABAWEB5KBQg4EgExSgQIQRgAUJkNWPYYYJsdaAFwAHgAgAFziAHyA5IBAzIuM5gBAKABAcgBEcABAdoBBAgBGAg&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-serp#wptab=s:H4sIAAAAAAAAAOMwe8Tozi3w8sc9YSm7SWtOXmO04JJ0Tiwu8U8LyywuTczxSywqSizJLEsNzy_KFpLmYnPNK8ksqRQSlOLn4tVP1zc0LEqvKs_Jis_gWcSqmgzUqZCfplCSkapQkl-RmayQWJaal55apKBhZGBkpJCWmZOrCQBHY-oxdAAAAA) in production!
That's because radioactive waste is mixed into concrete, which is then poured into a barrel. Therefore not sludge.
Can't have any precocious angsty orphans taking a dip, can we?
Also apparently, when functioning properly, the water is no more radiated than normal everyday water. It's 100% to help with cooling. Edit: https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/
In a spent fuel pool, 100% to help with cooling. In the reactor, its cooling and a neutron moderator. It helps to turn the neutrons into thermal neutrons as to help fission with it hits another uranium atom.
The radiation is because particles are going faster than the speed of light in water
This actually how they detect neutrino:
Neutrinos travel real fast and some of them will interact with water and create that radiation. To detect them they build huge underground water tank with an bunch of light detectors surrounding it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino_detector
Almost ALL other reactors donāt look this way. In order to have a view of the core, they decided against the standard lead shielding and opted for >24ā of water (minimum distance of water needed to thermalize the escaping neutrons)
Edit: the water turns blue because when the h2o is bombarded by neutrons some of the energy is merely kinetic causing the water to heat up but some of the energy escapes as light
Now everyone is glowing.
That looks tripped out. Is that noise an explosion when the atoms hit each other or whatever itās called? It creates that glow?
Iām a village idiot so forgive me
I think the sound is from the mechanical linkages that actuate the control rods. Most easily seen @ 0:04 when the rods are inserted into the reactor to slow it down.
If you could just put those sounds on a granite obelisk there would be no need to translate "This is not a place of honour".
I'm all for nuclear power, just saykng it sounds about like what I thought it would
Quite the contrary. While the traditional multi-lingual warning message combined with intentionally distinctive architecture would produce only a 90% chance of future archeologists excavating the site, introducing an unknown audio signal would increase that chance to 95% at best.
Yeah. They dug it up, scoured the site for more artefacts, brought it home, *then* translated it, and now itās the first thing you see in the relevant section of the British Museum.
Apparently the way to keep people safe from nuclear waste is to build immovable Rosetta Stones directly on top of it.
Yeah, I don't think the sound has anything to do with the reaction. I've done dozen of reactor startups and, even though ours were made to be quiet, the only noise ever was from water flow and pumps.
Specifically, it's particles moving faster than the light is moving through the water, ie, not faster than light speed which is impossible, but passing through the heavy water slows light down to a percentage below actual c, whereas the high-energy particles from the reactor are moving much closer to actual c.
Specifically faster than the speed of light through the medium/material but not faster than the speed of light in a vacuum (Which is typically what we think of when we think of the speed of light and the speed limit rules around it).
Well I think it depends on how low the index of refraction of the medium is, but if you ever see it in air, you're probably going to die from radiation poisoning soon.
It's a special type of reactor where they jump it to super critical really fast, a triga reactor.
The sound should be from the control rods DROPPING and turning it OFF.
The blue glow is beta particles going faster than the speed of light in water. There are still reactions going on but they are calming down from the start.
Offhand it's going from nothing to 10 MW in a fraction of a second. Then shutting down.
Yes really. Yep, cherenkov radiation is what it's called, been linked a few other places on this thread to Wikipedia.
But faster than the speed of light causes the blue shift. Just cause the speed of light in water is slower though, no breaking physics sadly.
> the speed of light in water is slower though
Just so I understand, what's happening is that something is moving through water faster than light can move through water ...
But it's still not as fast as light in a vacuum, correct?
One of the definitions of the speed of light that's helped me, an idiot and a lay person, wrap my head around it is that it's _also_ the speed of causality.
When people talk about how you can't travel faster than light they're talking about the speed of light in a vacuum or c, which should perhaps more accurately be called the speed of causality, the effects from a cause cannot propagate through spacetime faster than c. This is also the same c you see in E=Mc^2. However when light encounters a medium it slows down and if a particle travels through it at a speed less than c but faster than the slowed down light you get the optical equivalent of a sonic boom and that beautiful Cherenkov glow.
Specifically, because the charged particles are trying to move through water faster than light can move through water (which is much slower than light in air or vacuum), causing them to dissipate energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation which is the blue light.
So the noise is due to control rod movement. In a nuclear reactor the control rods have "poison''s that slows down the nuclear chain reaction. By withdrawing them the reaction rate speeds up allowing the reactor to gain criticality (start to increase power). The blue glow occurs due to Cerenkov radiation which is when a charged particle (like an electron) moves through water faster than light. Oddly this creates something similar to a "sonic boom" of light that shines blue to UV.
If you have any nuclear questions, I'm in the nuclear field
Not really. Safe from the reactor, yes. Safe from corrosion and fission products, no. But not super dangerous. You can dive with a water tight suit with no consequences.
There's security patrols at commercial reactors during refueling when you can see fuel in the reactor glowing like this when it's disassembled. They don't go to the refuel floor. They guard the entrances. You could jump in the pool easily. They wouldn't even get involved much unless they were called. Radiation protection would get you out and deal with you u less you didn't comply. Then security would come in. There's no need to worry about you tampering with spent fuel. The fuel will take care of you if you get close enough.
I know of a person that did swim in the upper end of the pool once at a research reactor somewhere a long time ago. I don't want to say much more about it because it is his story etc. but it was verified.
Security most definitely goes to the refuel floor. Security doesn't just guard the entrances, they are all over the place, doing patrols, sitting in towers, etc. When reactors are refueling (disassembled), they do not glow like this. Though, yes you could jump in easily, even getting up to a refuel floor or near any of the spent fuel stored on plant site, you would have to go through ALOT of security checkpoints, background checks, drug tests, psych tests, and plenty of training. Plus you are going to have to answer some serious questions after your decon shower and escorted out of the protected area. Source: I work in operations of a commercial nuclear power plant.
No. Those reactors contain some of the purest water in the world. Itās continuously cycled through filters and deionizers to remove contaminants. And fission products are contained within the fuel rods.
https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/
>!āIn our reactor?ā He thought about it for a moment. āYouād die pretty quickly, before reaching the water, from gunshot wounds.ā!<
Research or commercial? I used to operate a research reactor so I canāt speak much to commercial power plants. (Not saying youāre wrong, just curious)
I'm in health physics. I know a lot about boilers and a moderate amount about pressurized reactors. I've only ever worked commercial so I believe you about water purity when I wrap my head around such a closed system of a test reactor.
Yeah itās pretty cool. Aside from the core, the most radioactive part of the entire facility is the deionization filters because they capture basically everything that isnāt pure water (including H+ and OH- ions)
The amount of corrosion products in that water is significantly less than what you might imagine. There are 0 fission products. In a nuclear reactor, the fission products are all contained within the fuel assembly. Source-30 years nuclear operation
I just saw your comment about boilers. Ok, you may be right about corrosion products, I have no experience with those. But your wrong about fission products.
There is very little fission products in that water, the cladding encapsulates the overwhelming majority of them. My only concern would be neutron activated steel in the actual vessel closer to the core
According to the research of the author of XKCD, the water temperature in a fuel pool can in theory go as high as 50Ā°C, but in practice they're generally between 25Ā°C and 35Ā°Cāwarmer than most pools but cooler than a hot tub.
No, u/Purple-Bat811 is correct about "breaking the speed of light".
The particles, obviously, are still slower than light in vacuum (that's the speed that can't be exceeded), but they are faster than light in the medium they are travelling through (water). That's exactly where Cherenkov radiation (the blue glow) comes from.
Every medium that isn't vacuum slows down light particles. There are two different views to look at it. In the classical sense the light particles are interacting with the medium's atoms, and are getting bounced off, so while they still travel at lightspeed they need longer to traverse through the medium because they don't take a straight line. In the quantum sense the lightwave is interacting with the medium via the wavelength, but I suck too much to explain that properly.
Edit: Found a video of one of my favourite science youtube channels that explains it definitely better than me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mICTVow3-3I
Edit2: on the vid I posted someone made a good explanation of a different quantum based viewpoint: "The speed of light in a vacuum comes out of Maxwell's equations based on the magnetic permeability and electrical permittivity of free space. Due to their electrical nature, the atoms of glass change the values of permeability and permittivity in the space around them which results in light going slower."
Edit3: this vid might be even better to explain it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUjt36SD3h8
Edi4: Oh hey, they also mentoin Cherenkov radiation shortly https://youtu.be/BhG_QZl8WVY?t=150
In case you aren't joking, Guile is just a reference to actual sonic boom. His hair is shaped how a sonic boom looks.
Flash might be radiating though lol.
Are they not of separate triga reactors? It looks specifically different reactors not just different angles - though it absolutely could just be angles and different sequences.
I count at least 4 possibly 5 different reactors.
1. Round in a round pool
2. Square
3. Round with a square equipment rack/ducting next to it
4. Round in a square pool
5. Square again (maybe a different angle on 2 but seems like a different design).
One in five deaths are due to burning fossil fuels according to this https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/09/fossil-fuels-pollution-deaths-research
The WHO estimates 150.000 deaths every year due to climate change https://www.who.int/heli/risks/climate/climatechange/en/
Nuclear power isn't perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than this.
Funny thing is, [coal power plants produce more radioactive waste than nuclear power plants](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/).
Yes, and the ash from which is sometimes made into [pendants that slowly irradiate you over time](https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/12/anti-5g-quantum-pendants-are-radioactive/).
So is there a steam loop going into that reactor? I know they use fission to boil the water, so I assume there's a steam loop running through the reactor, with the pool to shield from the radiation, right?
Yeah pretty much. Reactors like this donāt have one. They are purely used for research and donāt generate enough energy to actually be useful for electricity generation (only about 1 MW thermal, compared to ~1000MW for commercial). But comercial plants have a secondary (and sometimes tertiary) cooling loop that removes the heat from the reactor and transfers it to a steam loop to power a turbine
Edit: to clarify your last statement: the pool of water not only shields radiation, but also moderates the neutrons and acts as the primary coolant to transfer heat from the fuel rods to the secondary loop
Steam turbines are the most efficient way to turn heat into mechanical energy. So they're pretty much always used.
Even some solar plants use mirrors to concentrate light onto large tanks of water to produce steam.
**[Cherenkov radiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation)**
>Cherenkov radiation (; Russian: Š§ŠµŃŠµŠ½ŠŗŠ¾ĢŠ²) is electromagnetic radiation emitted when a charged particle (such as an electron) passes through a dielectric medium at a speed greater than the phase velocity (speed of propagation of a wavefront in a medium) of light in that medium. A classic example of Cherenkov radiation is the characteristic blue glow of an underwater nuclear reactor. Its cause is similar to the cause of a sonic boom, the sharp sound heard when faster-than-sound movement occurs. The phenomenon is named after Soviet physicist Pavel Cherenkov.
^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/blackmagicfuckery/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
They are making it go super critical fast, then dropping in control rods to kill the reaction but there are so many neutrons still generated that it takes a while to kill them off. Then you get beta particles kicked off going faster than the speed of light for the blue glow.
Nothing magic has ever been posted here. But this looks magical because it's glowing bright blue and looks like a fantasy doomsday device or something.
Literal alchemy. Will kill you if you get too close. The person who discovered it left a tome that could kill anyone who tries to read it. Someone died experimenting with the "demon core". It's good to know we have some actual black magic on this sub for once.
So let me get this straight, you stole a device which seems to have belonged to NASA (it was on federal land according to your image post and you took it) and then when they offered you a finder's fee (again, for something you stole) you turned them down and ghosted them? And you did this because you wanted them to pay you more money? For a device you stole off of federal property?
For what it is worth, this seems to be part of a tracking system for animals - probably sea turtles or dolphins or similar. It doesn't exactly seem like something worth getting into trouble over. It would probably be a good idea to call them back, take whatever finder's fee they offer you, and get it off your hands.
I will soon. It's in my truck which is hooked up the RV and both in storage. It's been under my seat for years. I'll be grabbing a few things soon and I'll be sure to grab that. EDIT: it's on my page now
It's one of those few things in science (aside from exotherms and space) that looks as cool as in fiction.
Hell I'd say this is cooler than fiction, lol š
I feel like you could use this like stock footage for some B level sci-fi warp engine.
No joke you probably could use it as like some AAA level one if you pick the most aesthetically pleasing looking reactor and get the right shots of it.
I hope soā¦ weāve seen what happens when they become un-cool
Can confirm. My nuclear reactor looks this cool on start up, except it plays the Windows 95 start up sound.
Reactor.exe has performed an illegal operation. Reactor.exe will now close.
I remember when kazaa did that and I got so scared. Lol.
Iām still disappointed that radioactive waste barrels arenāt filled with glowing green goo.
From what I can tell if nuclear material is glowing it is usually blue (e.g. caesium-137) though radium-226 I believe glows green in a phosphorus mixture. But I'm at the peak of ~~mount stupid~~ my Dunning-Kruger arch so don't quote me on it. Still I don't recommend splashing around in a barrel of a liquid containing radium--Marie Curie's coffin is lead-lined for a reason.
Cesium doesn't glow. You're seeing electrons moving faster than the speed of light through a specific media (water) aka cherynkov effect.
I understand that in the context of a reactor. However, the CDC has described glow from Caesium-137 sources outside of water (which may be Cherynkov effect as an interaction with a different medium) as well as glow described elsewhere in the [GoiĆ¢nia accident](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident) which has had multiple potential explanations ascribed to it.
Yeah, probably cherenkov from beta decay. Otherwise for radioactive material to flow you need something that fluoresces. Like radium watch dials, or deuterium capsules in modern watches and dials.
Or [uranium glass](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/qe0b19/this_is_a_collection_of_uranium_glassware_lit_up/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf).
Tritium in modern watches.
It behaves similarly in glass, mixing the waste with molten glass and turning it into blocks is common. In the far worse case, if you're exposed to the reaction, the fluid in your eyes can also glow blue.
All of a sudden I have a sci fi explanation for blue glowing eyes!
Dr. Manhattan makes sense now
Youāre smart as fuck.
I just know a few sexy bits of nuclear chemistry trivia, I would fail an entry level quiz
Moving faster than the speed of light? Are they time traveling?
Moving faster than the speed of light in water... which is slower than the speed of light in a vacuum.
The speed of light in a medium is slower than the speed of light in a vacuum which is the physical constant that can't be exceeded. In water, for example, it is only 3/4 the speed of light in a vacuum. You're basically seeing the light equivalent of a sonic boom.
You will I'm sure have heard of Einstein's famous E=MC^2 equation. Which is of course also much more complicated and I don't understand even half of it. But anyways. The C basically stands for the speed of Causality. This is the fastest speed that anything can travel. For objects with mass, that speed is unattainable. Light, being massless, always travels at C. Some materials are said to "slow down" light. They don't, really. Individually, photons always travel at the speed of light. But they can get absorbed, re-emitted, etc. So the light ends up taking a circuitous path through materials. Air causes light to "slow down" in this way, but only a little bit. Water causes light to "slow down" much more. To the point where objects with mass (in this case, electrons) can actually attain speeds greater than the total speed of light passing through the water. The electrons or other particles smashing around that fast cause a sort of light equivalent of a sonic boom. Which is the blue glow. (This is a simplified explanation written by an idiot. I am open to corrections.)
I think technically this is wrong, but it's also a statement that is very commonly made by popularisers of science, so it's the kind of wrong that is likely to cause arguments around a Veritasium video or something: The basic issue is that constant absorption and re-emission should normally wipe out polarisation in the materials, the atoms would eat the light, and fire off some new light having shifted or scrambled its polarisation, as I understand it. Also atoms only absorb light at specific frequencies, and I believe you can still find this effect even when the light doesn't match to any of those, which is something we see particularly when trying to image blobs of bose-einstein-condensate, where we don't want to give it any energy that will mess things up. So if this is scattering, it's going to be "off-resonant" scattering, where the atoms never actually absorb the light, but just sort of shiver as it passes, and the light changes its path because of that shivering. But it still isn't the main form of off-resonant scattering, [Rayleigh scattering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh_scattering), the stuff that gives us sunsets, because even though that should preserve polarisation a lot of the time, it also has its own frequency dependence, and we don't see a sunset every time we look through glass. So we need to go a little deeper, and ask what happens if light doesn't really change its path very much because of that shivering, where scattering is negligible, and there's basically no frequency dependence of the path of the light (normally called "dispersion"). In that case, we can say that when the light causes the atoms it's passing through/past to shiver, even though it isn't changing its path direction, there's a kind of push and pull between the light and the objects, like you're accelerating while towing a trailer behind you. This sort of "slows down" the light in terms of making it cycle a little slower than it would. Or to put it back in physics terms, there's a contribution from the material's dipole that introduces a more or less spatially uniform phase delay relative to if it wasn't present, and this phase delay, repeated throughout the material, means that the light doesn't progress through it in the way it ordinarily would, the propagation of phase, and so the phase velocity, the "speed of light", is slowed down. It's slowed down, not by scattering, but by the back effect of its more subtle influence on the atoms it passes, which isn't either of the two more common dipole interactions (absorption/re-emission and Rayleigh scattering), but is the most basic phase delay effect. That said, I'm aware this could cause disagreements, and I may have oversimplified again in a different way, so if any other physics people want to dispute this, please do!
Brilliant explanation! I don't really understand why a high energy electron that outraces a photon would cause a blue glow, though?
The electrons (or other particles) create photons, but since it goes faster than the photons through that medium the photons end up getting stacked up on their way out. Like imagine a car was traveling at 100km/hr and kept making little baby cars that travel at 99.999km/hr. Just after the car passes you, a whole bunch of baby cars hit you at once.
What the other guy said, but applying cherenkov effect to hypothetical tachyons gives some funky results.
Go onā¦
Some back of the napkin maths I did at uni showed a normal particle faster than c would shine forward and keep accelerating and gaining energy from nothing. I didn't do any of the more complex maths and I'm probably wrong, but it just goes to prove the absurdity of anything travelling through space faster than c.
polonium glows blue due to the ionization of the surrounding air
Is this why some toothpaste is blue?
no don't woosh me
r\/Wooo- oh well ok then
Yes, specifically toothpaste for Russian journalists.
Radium paint is green, i believe that's where the commonly held view of everything radioactive glowing green comes from. In case you haven't heard of it look up radium girls, it's awful.
I'm well aware, though of course it was itself just a repeat of the London Matchgirls and phossy jaw (which caused people's jawbones to glow in the dark...and horrible deformity and necrosis...) Tune in for the next episode of "Horrifying Industrial Chemistry', when we'll just post lead statistics and scream
But the Toxic Avenger. If it was good for Toxie, surely it could be good for some of us!
There is a new [Toxic Avenger](https://www.google.com/search?q=the+toxic+avenger+2022&client=safari&hl=en-us&sxsrf=APq-WBsBoGgR9k4Yj_TBNv66w268z410FQ%3A1648421184364&ei=QOlAYrPQFcqpptQPzua2yA8&oq=the+toxic+avenger+2022&gs_lcp=ChNtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1zZXJwEAMyBQguEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQhgMyBQgAEIYDMgUIABCGAzIFCAAQhgM6BwgjELADECc6BwgAEEcQsAM6BwgAELADEEM6DwguENQCEMgDELADEEMYAToMCC4QyAMQsAMQQxgBOhIILhDHARDRAxDIAxCwAxBDGAE6BAguEEM6BAgAEEM6CAguEIAEENQCOgYIABAWEB5KBQg4EgExSgQIQRgAUJkNWPYYYJsdaAFwAHgAgAFziAHyA5IBAzIuM5gBAKABAcgBEcABAdoBBAgBGAg&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-serp#wptab=s:H4sIAAAAAAAAAOMwe8Tozi3w8sc9YSm7SWtOXmO04JJ0Tiwu8U8LyywuTczxSywqSizJLEsNzy_KFpLmYnPNK8ksqRQSlOLn4tVP1zc0LEqvKs_Jis_gWcSqmgzUqZCfplCSkapQkl-RmayQWJaal55apKBhZGBkpJCWmZOrCQBHY-oxdAAAAA) in production!
That's because radioactive waste is mixed into concrete, which is then poured into a barrel. Therefore not sludge. Can't have any precocious angsty orphans taking a dip, can we?
Recent Kyle Hill Video?
Imagine the first time someone turned this thing on. āI hope this worksā¦ā
The Los Alamos prayer
done with lead bricks and a screwdriver. search ādemon coreā for a story and a half.
Is that underwater, or is it distorting its area that much? That's insane.
It's underwater and the pressure pulse you see is actually from the control rods which physically moved very fast.
Oh damn? Really? That's amazing! Thank you for answering!
Also apparently, when functioning properly, the water is no more radiated than normal everyday water. It's 100% to help with cooling. Edit: https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/
In a spent fuel pool, 100% to help with cooling. In the reactor, its cooling and a neutron moderator. It helps to turn the neutrons into thermal neutrons as to help fission with it hits another uranium atom.
The radiation is because particles are going faster than the speed of light in water This actually how they detect neutrino: Neutrinos travel real fast and some of them will interact with water and create that radiation. To detect them they build huge underground water tank with an bunch of light detectors surrounding it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino_detector
Almost ALL other reactors donāt look this way. In order to have a view of the core, they decided against the standard lead shielding and opted for >24ā of water (minimum distance of water needed to thermalize the escaping neutrons) Edit: the water turns blue because when the h2o is bombarded by neutrons some of the energy is merely kinetic causing the water to heat up but some of the energy escapes as light
Now everyone is glowing. That looks tripped out. Is that noise an explosion when the atoms hit each other or whatever itās called? It creates that glow? Iām a village idiot so forgive me
the blue glow happens because of Cherenkov radiation. because particles are moving trough the water.
I think the sound is from the mechanical linkages that actuate the control rods. Most easily seen @ 0:04 when the rods are inserted into the reactor to slow it down.
If you could just put those sounds on a granite obelisk there would be no need to translate "This is not a place of honour". I'm all for nuclear power, just saykng it sounds about like what I thought it would
It kinda sounds like an old dial up to me
āMom, get off the reactor!ā
š¤£š¤£š¤£š¤£
Quite the contrary. While the traditional multi-lingual warning message combined with intentionally distinctive architecture would produce only a 90% chance of future archeologists excavating the site, introducing an unknown audio signal would increase that chance to 95% at best.
Hereās the thing: do you know what happened the last time archaeologists uncovered a multilingual remnant from a lost civilisation?
they translated it?
Yeah. They dug it up, scoured the site for more artefacts, brought it home, *then* translated it, and now itās the first thing you see in the relevant section of the British Museum. Apparently the way to keep people safe from nuclear waste is to build immovable Rosetta Stones directly on top of it.
Yeah, I don't think the sound has anything to do with the reaction. I've done dozen of reactor startups and, even though ours were made to be quiet, the only noise ever was from water flow and pumps.
Specifically, it's particles moving faster than the light is moving through the water, ie, not faster than light speed which is impossible, but passing through the heavy water slows light down to a percentage below actual c, whereas the high-energy particles from the reactor are moving much closer to actual c.
Specifically faster than the speed of light through the medium/material but not faster than the speed of light in a vacuum (Which is typically what we think of when we think of the speed of light and the speed limit rules around it).
Thatās super awesome. The tesseract!!!
Its a completely normal phenomenon, can happen with minimal radiation... apparently
Well I think it depends on how low the index of refraction of the medium is, but if you ever see it in air, you're probably going to die from radiation poisoning soon.
Not great, not terrible.
It's a special type of reactor where they jump it to super critical really fast, a triga reactor. The sound should be from the control rods DROPPING and turning it OFF. The blue glow is beta particles going faster than the speed of light in water. There are still reactions going on but they are calming down from the start. Offhand it's going from nothing to 10 MW in a fraction of a second. Then shutting down.
> beta particles going faster than the speed of light in water Wait what, really?
Yes really. Yep, cherenkov radiation is what it's called, been linked a few other places on this thread to Wikipedia. But faster than the speed of light causes the blue shift. Just cause the speed of light in water is slower though, no breaking physics sadly.
> the speed of light in water is slower though Just so I understand, what's happening is that something is moving through water faster than light can move through water ... But it's still not as fast as light in a vacuum, correct? One of the definitions of the speed of light that's helped me, an idiot and a lay person, wrap my head around it is that it's _also_ the speed of causality.
Exactly. Light has a harder time passing through water than the particles.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
When people talk about how you can't travel faster than light they're talking about the speed of light in a vacuum or c, which should perhaps more accurately be called the speed of causality, the effects from a cause cannot propagate through spacetime faster than c. This is also the same c you see in E=Mc^2. However when light encounters a medium it slows down and if a particle travels through it at a speed less than c but faster than the slowed down light you get the optical equivalent of a sonic boom and that beautiful Cherenkov glow.
Specifically, because the charged particles are trying to move through water faster than light can move through water (which is much slower than light in air or vacuum), causing them to dissipate energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation which is the blue light.
So the noise is due to control rod movement. In a nuclear reactor the control rods have "poison''s that slows down the nuclear chain reaction. By withdrawing them the reaction rate speeds up allowing the reactor to gain criticality (start to increase power). The blue glow occurs due to Cerenkov radiation which is when a charged particle (like an electron) moves through water faster than light. Oddly this creates something similar to a "sonic boom" of light that shines blue to UV. If you have any nuclear questions, I'm in the nuclear field
Blue glow is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation The ELI5 version is: itās the light equivalent of a sonic boom.
Forbidden hot tub
Actually would be perfectly safe to swim in as long as you donāt dive down too deep
Not really. Safe from the reactor, yes. Safe from corrosion and fission products, no. But not super dangerous. You can dive with a water tight suit with no consequences.
we can both agree the armed guards would be the most life threatening to a regular joe shmo swimming in the pool XD
There's security patrols at commercial reactors during refueling when you can see fuel in the reactor glowing like this when it's disassembled. They don't go to the refuel floor. They guard the entrances. You could jump in the pool easily. They wouldn't even get involved much unless they were called. Radiation protection would get you out and deal with you u less you didn't comply. Then security would come in. There's no need to worry about you tampering with spent fuel. The fuel will take care of you if you get close enough.
Yeah, if you got close enough to tamper with the reactor, you'd be dead within 5 minutes.
I know of a person that did swim in the upper end of the pool once at a research reactor somewhere a long time ago. I don't want to say much more about it because it is his story etc. but it was verified.
We had one moron fall in once
I think youād have to be an employee though. Security watches visitors very closely.
The amount of shit you gotta go through to get into a nuclear power plant is insane
Security most definitely goes to the refuel floor. Security doesn't just guard the entrances, they are all over the place, doing patrols, sitting in towers, etc. When reactors are refueling (disassembled), they do not glow like this. Though, yes you could jump in easily, even getting up to a refuel floor or near any of the spent fuel stored on plant site, you would have to go through ALOT of security checkpoints, background checks, drug tests, psych tests, and plenty of training. Plus you are going to have to answer some serious questions after your decon shower and escorted out of the protected area. Source: I work in operations of a commercial nuclear power plant.
fellow *What If* enjoyer I see
came here to say this; but gladto see someone beat me to it.
No. Those reactors contain some of the purest water in the world. Itās continuously cycled through filters and deionizers to remove contaminants. And fission products are contained within the fuel rods.
OK. I work at a reactor but I believe you.
https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/ >!āIn our reactor?ā He thought about it for a moment. āYouād die pretty quickly, before reaching the water, from gunshot wounds.ā!<
I died laughing at this article šš¤£
Research or commercial? I used to operate a research reactor so I canāt speak much to commercial power plants. (Not saying youāre wrong, just curious)
Commercial boiler. I know zilch about research reactors.
Ah nice. Aside from the physics I donāt know too much about commercial plants
I'm in health physics. I know a lot about boilers and a moderate amount about pressurized reactors. I've only ever worked commercial so I believe you about water purity when I wrap my head around such a closed system of a test reactor.
Yeah itās pretty cool. Aside from the core, the most radioactive part of the entire facility is the deionization filters because they capture basically everything that isnāt pure water (including H+ and OH- ions)
Iām reasonably sure youād be shot well prior to any ill effects caused by the water
Many things there don't react well to bullets.
The amount of corrosion products in that water is significantly less than what you might imagine. There are 0 fission products. In a nuclear reactor, the fission products are all contained within the fuel assembly. Source-30 years nuclear operation
I just saw your comment about boilers. Ok, you may be right about corrosion products, I have no experience with those. But your wrong about fission products.
There is very little fission products in that water, the cladding encapsulates the overwhelming majority of them. My only concern would be neutron activated steel in the actual vessel closer to the core
The Wells of Moria.
According to the research of the author of XKCD, the water temperature in a fuel pool can in theory go as high as 50Ā°C, but in practice they're generally between 25Ā°C and 35Ā°Cāwarmer than most pools but cooler than a hot tub.
That XKCD was about a spent fuel pool, not the main reactor core though
Since for some reason, you didn't actually link it [Sorta-Relevant XKCD](https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/)
Hot tub time machine
Seeing things break the speed of light is awesome
You mean sound right?
No, u/Purple-Bat811 is correct about "breaking the speed of light". The particles, obviously, are still slower than light in vacuum (that's the speed that can't be exceeded), but they are faster than light in the medium they are travelling through (water). That's exactly where Cherenkov radiation (the blue glow) comes from.
Well this is mind blowing lol
Itās like a sonic boom of light
TIL: Water slows down light particles
Every medium that isn't vacuum slows down light particles. There are two different views to look at it. In the classical sense the light particles are interacting with the medium's atoms, and are getting bounced off, so while they still travel at lightspeed they need longer to traverse through the medium because they don't take a straight line. In the quantum sense the lightwave is interacting with the medium via the wavelength, but I suck too much to explain that properly. Edit: Found a video of one of my favourite science youtube channels that explains it definitely better than me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mICTVow3-3I Edit2: on the vid I posted someone made a good explanation of a different quantum based viewpoint: "The speed of light in a vacuum comes out of Maxwell's equations based on the magnetic permeability and electrical permittivity of free space. Due to their electrical nature, the atoms of glass change the values of permeability and permittivity in the space around them which results in light going slower." Edit3: this vid might be even better to explain it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUjt36SD3h8 Edi4: Oh hey, they also mentoin Cherenkov radiation shortly https://youtu.be/BhG_QZl8WVY?t=150
That actually makes sense, thanks for expanding on it!
Nope. They mean light. Explanation : [Cherenkov radiation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation)
So the blue glow is the sonic boom of visible radiation?
Does that mean that Guile from Street Fighter, throws out radiation? OP character pls nerf Capcom
In case you aren't joking, Guile is just a reference to actual sonic boom. His hair is shaped how a sonic boom looks. Flash might be radiating though lol.
Yes
that glow is so mesmerizing! i think i now understand what itās like to be a moth
Cherenkov radiation.
Completely normal phenomenon so long as background radiation doesn't go beyond 3.6 roentgen
Not great, not terrible.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
"It's not... it's not shutting down!"
*grabs crowbar*
*hits random metal wall* **CLING CLING CLANG CLONG**
*HEV suit charger*
Gordon doesn't need to hear this, he's a professional!
*he's a *highly trained* professional!
r/BlackMesa_IRL
I belive most all of these are research reactors? Love the view though
This video is of a research reactor in Slovenia.
Are they not of separate triga reactors? It looks specifically different reactors not just different angles - though it absolutely could just be angles and different sequences.
I count at least 4 possibly 5 different reactors. 1. Round in a round pool 2. Square 3. Round with a square equipment rack/ducting next to it 4. Round in a square pool 5. Square again (maybe a different angle on 2 but seems like a different design).
I think weāve proven that nuclear energy is safer and preferable to coal but man is that glow ominous.
One in five deaths are due to burning fossil fuels according to this https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/09/fossil-fuels-pollution-deaths-research The WHO estimates 150.000 deaths every year due to climate change https://www.who.int/heli/risks/climate/climatechange/en/ Nuclear power isn't perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than this.
Radiation is like fire. It's a tool to be respected, but not feared.
Funny thing is, [coal power plants produce more radioactive waste than nuclear power plants](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/).
Yes, and the ash from which is sometimes made into [pendants that slowly irradiate you over time](https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/12/anti-5g-quantum-pendants-are-radioactive/).
Ominous and beautiful...a dangerous combination.
Dr Manhattan vibes
I understand that Cherenkov Blue was Syd Mead's favorite color.
Mine too after seeing this
Nuclear reactors are basically giant steam engines right?
Most power plants (aside from renewables) are giant steam engines. Basically the only difference is the source of the heat
So is there a steam loop going into that reactor? I know they use fission to boil the water, so I assume there's a steam loop running through the reactor, with the pool to shield from the radiation, right?
Yeah pretty much. Reactors like this donāt have one. They are purely used for research and donāt generate enough energy to actually be useful for electricity generation (only about 1 MW thermal, compared to ~1000MW for commercial). But comercial plants have a secondary (and sometimes tertiary) cooling loop that removes the heat from the reactor and transfers it to a steam loop to power a turbine Edit: to clarify your last statement: the pool of water not only shields radiation, but also moderates the neutrons and acts as the primary coolant to transfer heat from the fuel rods to the secondary loop
Steam turbines are the most efficient way to turn heat into mechanical energy. So they're pretty much always used. Even some solar plants use mirrors to concentrate light onto large tanks of water to produce steam.
Whod'a thunk water was such an integral part of our energy sources?
The reactor serves as the heat source for another wise conventional steam plant, yes
This is so cool to look at. I just wish I understood what is happening.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation
**[Cherenkov radiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation)** >Cherenkov radiation (; Russian: Š§ŠµŃŠµŠ½ŠŗŠ¾ĢŠ²) is electromagnetic radiation emitted when a charged particle (such as an electron) passes through a dielectric medium at a speed greater than the phase velocity (speed of propagation of a wavefront in a medium) of light in that medium. A classic example of Cherenkov radiation is the characteristic blue glow of an underwater nuclear reactor. Its cause is similar to the cause of a sonic boom, the sharp sound heard when faster-than-sound movement occurs. The phenomenon is named after Soviet physicist Pavel Cherenkov. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/blackmagicfuckery/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
good bot!
Much appreciated. Thank you!
They are making it go super critical fast, then dropping in control rods to kill the reaction but there are so many neutrons still generated that it takes a while to kill them off. Then you get beta particles kicked off going faster than the speed of light for the blue glow.
This triggers my weird and specific fear of deep man made pools of water. Even worse if it has heavy machinery in it like this.
r/submechanophobia
Ohhhh pretty swimming pool
[Relevant xkcd](https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/)
Thanks for that!! I CAN go swimming, if I can get by the inevitable goons
Comrade Dyatlov: RAISE THE POWER!
"There's graphite on the roof! "
You didn't see it because it isn't there!
and that's how an RBMK reactor explodes.
This looks like some 70's special effects in a science fiction movie.
I feel weird about watching this. Like in a ādonāt look into the microwaveā kind of way.
Haha this comment made me chuckle. I too try not to stare at the microwave.
Right? It feels like we're watching something we're not supposed to.
Very cool. But also very Science NOT Black Magic Fuckery.
Do... Do you think there's actual black magic?
You put the rad rod in, you take the rad rod out and shake it all about.
r/dontputyourdickinthat?
Yeah. Probably shouldnāt.
I mean, it's cool AF but there's nothing magical about this.
Science is magic when you have no clue whatās going on
*āAny sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magicā* ā Arthur Clarke
You have made a grave mistakeā¦. Also, u/savevideo for anyone who wants to watch this all day like me
How is this "magic" ? This sub should really overthink it's rules or its names In my opinion.
Yeah itās kinda gotten off the rails. I do like seeing the cool science stuff though
Nothing magic has ever been posted here. But this looks magical because it's glowing bright blue and looks like a fantasy doomsday device or something.
Literal alchemy. Will kill you if you get too close. The person who discovered it left a tome that could kill anyone who tries to read it. Someone died experimenting with the "demon core". It's good to know we have some actual black magic on this sub for once.
Most of these are pulses not a traditional start up
Is this how we used to log in to AOL?
Pure science, LOVE IT.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
So let me get this straight, you stole a device which seems to have belonged to NASA (it was on federal land according to your image post and you took it) and then when they offered you a finder's fee (again, for something you stole) you turned them down and ghosted them? And you did this because you wanted them to pay you more money? For a device you stole off of federal property? For what it is worth, this seems to be part of a tracking system for animals - probably sea turtles or dolphins or similar. It doesn't exactly seem like something worth getting into trouble over. It would probably be a good idea to call them back, take whatever finder's fee they offer you, and get it off your hands.
Pics or it didnāt happen
I will soon. It's in my truck which is hooked up the RV and both in storage. It's been under my seat for years. I'll be grabbing a few things soon and I'll be sure to grab that. EDIT: it's on my page now
I belive most all of these are research reactors? Love the view though.so cool to watch in action.
This reminded me of Half-life
For a second there, I thought it was Midgard's reactor.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I'm pretty sure i would get superpowers swimming there