No thermostat?

[Tom_Veatch]

Was the water sack for adding water to the radiator or what. I've never heard of that. Why was it hanging from the hood instead of being in the trunk or something.

Like the Lister Bag which was in use when I hung up my combat boots circa 40 years ago, and may still be in use as far as I know. A good, low tech way of keeping drinking water reasonably cool.

 

[Soundguy]

I saw a discovery channel show last night on the nuclear facility that produced our plutonium for the 40's thru the 70's.. etc.. Something like 9-12 reactors at one time.

in any case.. their water cooling system the pumped right out of the river.. the water passed thru the reactor under pressure.. took about a second for the water to pass thru. Something like 27,000 GMP was the flow rate for their reactor cooling system.

That should put the water cooling / speed issue into a little bit of perspective.. etc.

Worst aprt was the water got dumped right back into the river afterwards! Big cleanup issue now....

Soundguy

 

[patrick_g]

The water sacks were often seen on cars in the great American southwest (especialy in the desert.) The sacks were of a slightly porous nature. The air hitting the sacks caused evaporation which cooled the contents. It had little or nothing to do with water for your radiator as it was intended to make cool drinking water. It worked fine out there where the relative humidity was low.

Pat

 

[Soundguy]

Speaking of evap and realitive humidity. Long time ago...Anyone else ever use one of those wet bulb / dry bulp 'swinging' thermometers in order to figure RH?

Soundguy

 

[patrick_g]

Speaking of evap and realitive humidity. Long time ago...Anyone else ever use one of those wet bulb / dry bulp 'swinging' thermometers in order to figure RH?

Soundguy

You refer to a sling psychrometer which is composed of two thermometers, one dry bulb and the other a wet bulb. The one thermometer (usually mercury or alcohol in a cap tube) had its reservoir bulb in a little cloth sack with its other end in a small container of water.

You sling the thing around in a circle at high speed and the evaporative cooling reduces the reading on the wet thermometer. The difference in temperatures between the wet and dry thermometers indicated the relative humidity. You just looked up the temps in a chart to get the RH.

These are still used although there are electronic sensors available to do the job now.

Pat

 

[Tom_Veatch]

...

in any case.. their water cooling system the pumped right out of the river.. the water passed thru the reactor under pressure.. took about a second for the water to pass thru. Something like 27,000 GMP was the flow rate for their reactor cooling system.
...

When I was in Huntsville, AL in the early 70's, I recall the local paper reported that the EPA (or some government bureaucracy) tried to shut down the TVA nuclear generating plant at Muscle Shoals. The plant drew its cooling water from a reservoir fed by the Tenn. river and returned the water to the reservoir which then emptied back into the Tenn. River.

One of the regulatory/environmental constraints on the plant was that the temperature differential between the water entering the reservoir and that exiting back into the river couldn't exceed some relatively small value. One day, the EPA monitors discovered the temperature differential was out of limits and called on the plant to shut down until the temperatures returned to within specification.

Turns out the plant had been offline for maintenace, refueling, or some such, and hadn't been running any cooling water through the plant for several days. The sun, that nuclear furnace in the sky, was heating the reservoir surface more than the EPA would allow. Don't recall whether or not they tried to get a court order to have the sun reduce its output temporarily.

Possibly an urban legend, but my experiences with government bureaucrats does not lead me to doubt the report.

 

[patrick_g]

Tom, San Onofre nuclear power station just north of San Diego uses open loop cooling with sea water. Aqua culture experiments like growing species who need warmer water and such were pretty successful (if you ignore the baby fish with 3-4 eyes and an extra tail.) Just kidding about the genetic mutations.

The cooling water, whether from the ocean or a river does not go through the reactor to cool it! A recirculating transfer medium is used to carry the heat from the reactor to heat exchangers where it is transfered to the cooling water. The water doesn't "see" a lot of radiation. The faster they flow the water through the heat exchangers the better they work (within reason, yoiu don't want hypersonic turbulence) and the lower the temperature of the effluent stream.

Pat

 

[Egon]

When using raw water as a coolant the high flow rates may help keep the exchange surfaces scoured clean and prevent fouling or bacterial/animal growth. It may also keep all dissolved minerals in solution so they do not precipitate out.

have not water coolers in the guise of "Olla's" been in use from days long before out time.

There are also many an evaporative type cooling tower in use for cooling water. All those white plumes from the tops of tall buildings may be such a unit in operation.

 

[patrick_g]

When using raw water as a coolant the high flow rates may help keep the exchange surfaces scoured clean and prevent fouling or bacterial/animal growth. It may also keep all dissolved minerals in solution so they do not precipitate out.

have not water coolers in the guise of "Olla's" been in use from days long before out time.

There are also many an evaporative type cooling tower in use for cooling water. All those white plumes from the tops of tall buildings may be such a unit in operation.

Good benefits on keeping passeges clean but the algae huggers don't care if your equipment fails they just want a small delta T in the discharge water.

There are evaporative coolers that work well for residential use and have no "filter media" like the excelsior, fiber glass mats etc. They just spray a mist over the top of a chimney. The cooling from some of that mist evaporating makes the air heavier and it falls down the chimney which sucks in more ambient air and you have a continuous gravity flow of cool air down the chimney (tower?) These systems require rather large ducts. I have never seen one with muich of a distribution system, typically just a large hole in a central (like a great room) wall that looks like a fireplace but emits a fair draft of cool air.

The advantages are obvious. NO electricity needed which makes them fine for a solar powered residence. They only work really well where there is low relative humidity (desert of near desert like conditions.

Hows that for marginally related triviata?

Pat

 

[Tom_Veatch]

Tom, San Onofre nuclear power station just north of San Diego uses open loop cooling with sea water. Aqua culture experiments like growing species who need warmer water and such were pretty successful (if you ignore the baby fish with 3-4 eyes and an extra tail.) Just kidding about the genetic mutations. ...

I've sometimes wondered about the dilemma that would be faced by environmental organizations under circumstances where long term operations have changed the downstream ecology to favor warm water species. If one of the existing, favored species happened to be on an endangered species list, would the organization lobby to prevent shutting the plant down?

And you're right that the cooling water doesn't come in direct contact with the reactor core. Radiation in the effluent significantly exceeding background levels would indicate a very serious problem in the cooling system.