Monday, December 10, 2012

Nuclear Reactors, Fantasy and fact!

Its a crazy thing that an awful lot of superheros are born from an radioactive disaster of some sort.
Dr Manhattan and the intrinsic field generator, Spiderman being bitten by a radioactive spider, and of course the Incredible Hulk and his gamma ray overdose.



In reality of course places where you can get exposed to such radiation have a LOT of safety features. Take for instance the reactor in this video, its got something like 5 failsafes. 5 rods can be dropped into the reactor, each of which will kill the criticality in milliseconds. They are held up by electromagnets, so if the power fails, they drop under gravity into the reactor. If somehow they don't drop under gravity, they can be pushed by compressed air.

Anyways, this is a little taster of what its like to work inside a nuclear reactor! :-)

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