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How can a nuclear power plant create a hydrogen explosion?

Safety Inspection Official: Is it safe?

NE: Safe enough, I guess.

SIO: So, it will not cause explosions and things like that? Ha ha ha.

NE: Ha ha. No, I certainly hope not. Using a material that could cause explosions in a nuclear power plant would be crazy.

SIO. It sure would.

Like, say, uranium. Better not use any of that in nuclear power stations.

The rather fundamental problem you're ignoring here is that virtually anything that can take part in an exothermic reaction can generate an explosion or a fire. However, if you exclude anything that can take part in an exothermic reaction, you automatically exclude anything that can generate power.

Nothing is 100% safe.

Dave
 
Like, say, uranium. Better not use any of that in nuclear power stations.

The rather fundamental problem you're ignoring here is that virtually anything that can take part in an exothermic reaction can generate an explosion or a fire. However, if you exclude anything that can take part in an exothermic reaction, you automatically exclude anything that can generate power.

Nothing is 100% safe.

Dave

As I understand it, in the case of a nuclear accident, the nuclear fuel needs to be contained, protected and isolated. To then use a material in the reactor that could lead to hydrogen explosions sounds pretty darn outright dangerous.
 
As I understand it, in the case of a nuclear accident, the nuclear fuel needs to be contained, protected and isolated. To then use a material in the reactor that could lead to hydrogen explosions sounds pretty darn outright dangerous.

Which materials would you suggest they use?
 
Well, Water in a boiler can cause a huge explosion. Why are they allowed to use water?
 
It doesn't actually, however this is a widely believed miscomprehension about aluminium. In reality you can happily melt the stuff and cast it without it catching fire.
Thats because that isn't actually entirely aluminum. There is a way to trick the material into acting like pure aluminum and well it ain't pretty. I'm actually surprised that there haven't been terrorist attempts using the trick either especially since entire planes have been written off as scrap.
 
If they MUST use materials that can cause explosions, then should the nuclear power plant be allowed to be built in the first place?

Unusually, that's a perfectly reasonable question. Building nuclear power plants in areas subject to occasional tsunamis is certainly questionable, if safer sites are available. But nothing is without risk. Coal dust can explode. So can sawdust. So can gas. So should we be allowed to build coal fired, wood fired or gas fired power stations? Without them, we're in the Middle Ages. If Peak Oil warnings are to be believed, even with them we've got problems. So at what point does the risk become justified by the benefits?

A perfectly reasonable question, but not one that casts the slightest doubt on the very existence of nuclear power, nor suggests a massive conspiracy to construct fake nuclear power stations using nonexistent technology to charge unnecessary energy storage media.

Dave
 
As I understand it, in the case of a nuclear accident, the nuclear fuel needs to be contained, protected and isolated. To then use a material in the reactor that could lead to hydrogen explosions sounds pretty darn outright dangerous.

That's why there are proposals for Generation IV reactors that are either liquid sodium or liquid lead cooled. But back when many current reactors were designed, they went with what they knew, and for plants like Fukushima, that was water.

The key to preventing hydrogen production is to keep things from overheating to begin with. Which is why they were working all out to pump water in before the disaster. Engineers are actually aware of the fact that hydrogen can be produced; that's why there are systems present to handle it's production.
Safety devices normally burn the generated hydrogen when it is vented before explosive concentrations are reached...
But as everyone knows, in the case of Fukushima, so many things went wrong.
... but these systems failed, possibly due to the shortage of electrical power.
As many contingencies that are predictable get planned for, but as disaster investigators have discovered in the past, disasters tend to occur due to an accumulation of conditions, not any one flaw. You are acting like a single issue is the problem, but it's not.

Instead of looking at things conspiratorially, why don't you garner basic information regarding the topic first, then see if there's anything conspiratorial about a given situation? That's the proper way to analyze things.
 
I'm also curious where Anders thinks Japan (and the rest of us) are going to get the power we need to fuel our economies. Considering Japan's energy needs please, tell us how they should generate electricity.
 
I'm also curious where Anders thinks Japan (and the rest of us) are going to get the power we need to fuel our economies. Considering Japan's energy needs please, tell us how they should generate electricity.

The conspiracy theory about nuclear power plants being water power plants is very, very speculative. But the idea of water fuel in general is less speculative I think. Such as Stanley Meyer's invention: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFIlXaABU54
 
The conspiracy theory about nuclear power plants being water power plants is very, very speculative. But the idea of water fuel in general is less speculative I think. Such as Stanley Meyer's invention: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFIlXaABU54

You must mean this Stanley Meyer's

According to Meyer, the device required less energy to perform electrolysis than the minimum energy requirement predicted or measured by conventional science.[1] If the device worked as specified, it would violate both the first and second laws of thermodynamics,[1][2] allowing operation as a perpetual motion machine.[2] Meyer's claims about his "Water Fuel Cell" and the car that it powered were found to be fraudulent by an Ohio court in 1996.[1][3]

Only breaking 2 of the 3 laws of Thermodynamics, I think you need to try harder!

It took me all of 10 sec to find you are talking crap.. So on that note I'm not going to feed the troll any more...
 
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You must mean this Stanley Meyer's



Only breaking 2 of the 3 laws of Thermodynamics, I think you need to try harder!

It took me all of 10 sec to find you are talking crap.. So on that note I'm not going to feed the troll any more...

I think Meyer's invention could be real. How can it break the laws of thermodynamics? By tapping into the zero point field!

"Various formulations of the second law are found to be invalid at low T. First, the Clausius inequality can be violated, because heat can be extracted from the zero point energy of the cloud of bath modes." -- From: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12366179
 
You must mean this Stanley Meyer's



Only breaking 2 of the 3 laws of Thermodynamics, I think you need to try harder!

It took me all of 10 sec to find you are talking crap.. So on that note I'm not going to feed the troll any more...

To quote Homer Simpson, "Young Lady, in this house we obey the Laws of Thermodynamics".
 
To quote Homer Simpson, "Young Lady, in this house we obey the Laws of Thermodynamics".

And the reply to that could be: "And that, dear Homer, is why you still have to pay for electricity." ;)

And then Homer says: "Yes, the Laws of Thermodynamics are immutable."

And the lady teaches Homer a lesson: "No my dear, the Laws of Thermodynamics make the energy companies wealthy, not because they are immutable, but because the knowledge about how to break them is still a tightly held secret."
 

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