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moderatetoaboveaverage · 10 hours ago

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"Boil water to turn fan" as if multistage steam turbine generators are not one of the sexiest kinds of machines every made

nuclear power is impressive until you get up to why. "we use the most precisely engineered machinery ever created to split atoms to release energy" oh yeah how come? "boil water to turn a fan" get the fuck out

#its genuinely crazy the math and engineering that go into making these absolutely massive steam turbines #its an incredible balancing act to optimize between the interconnected variables of pressure velocity and temperature in order #to extract as much energy as possible from the steam as it moves through the system #especially like. those generators need to maintain a very precise rotational speed in order to prevent the coupled generator #from going out of phase with the power grid #(3000 RPM for 50 Hz grids and 3600 RPM for 60 Hz grids)#like the reactor part sounds like a lot of engineering work (and it is!) but like. the turbine is fucking incredibly impressive too #each one of those turbine stages needs to have very specifically shaped blades in order to control steam pressure drop and steam velocity #and the blades need to be able to physically handle being in a wet (at least for nuclear plants where the steam is pretty wet) high temp #environment and constantly being spun at high rotational speeds for decades at a time.#we had to develop specialized nickel titanium superalloys with tightly controlled crystalline structures in order to build turbines this big #stare into the depths of “wow we really just use steam to spin a big fan that sounds simple” and you encounter #the lifes work of thousands of mathematicians computer engineers material scientists and mechanical engineers #the first device we could call a steam turbine was made as a toy in tthe first century ancient greece and egypt #the first steam turbine with a practical use was described in 1551 in Ottoman Egypt. it was used to turn a spit of meat over a fire.#the first modern multistage impluse steam turbine was made in 1884 and revolutionized electricity generation and marine propulsion #in the 141 years since there have been more improvements than one could even list #from major design changes credited to great men to miniscule efficiencies and optimizations gained from tweaking the composition of an alloy #idk. i think its beautiful to think about the web of human knowledge woven collectively by thousands of hands across history #could you imagine what the ancient greek engineers who first put together the prototype for an aeolipile would think to see what we have #made now. could they even recognize our designs as belonging to the same category of object as their little toy #anyway #appreciate the humble steam turbine with the same eye you give to the reactor core #mine #just my thoughts

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