Recent comments in /f/askscience

colt61986 t1_j5yu5ll wrote

Reply to comment by radioactive_dude in How hot is the steam coming out of nuclear power plants? by ivy-claw

You seem to be someone to ask this question. Is it possible that the boiler feed water is filtered sea water? I know in Saudi Arabia they use oil fired power plants to also desalinate and generate electricity but I’ve always wondered if there was technical reason why this was never done with a nuclear plant. From my limited work in coal fired power plant that the boiler feed water is on a loop and economized ,and to use the water that was desalinated by the steam generation for public consumption would make it a 100% make up system which would lead to a much heavier filtering/chemical treatment process and there would have to be engineered process to clear the debris from the bottom of the boiler system but it seems like this would be a great solution to some water problems in arid/desert places that are close to an ocean like Texas maybe. It’s an answer I’ve been looking for for years and nobody has ever given me an answer.

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censored_username t1_j5ythbs wrote

Reply to comment by quetric in Why do sample return missions such as OSIRIS-REx use their own reentry vehicles instead of just going to the space station for pickup and return with ISS equipment? by PromptCritical725

Eh, you would design your approach so you intersect the ISS orbit at your perigee. Then decelerate just enough to get a highly eccentric orbit (or a weakly stable one), match inclination at apogee and then decelerate further at perigee.

Still, that would require a restartable motor with >4km/s delta V, which implies at least like 80% of your vehicle being storable propellants. A heat shield is simply lighter.

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UnamedStreamNumber9 t1_j5ytgex wrote

Reply to comment by electric_ionland in Why do sample return missions such as OSIRIS-REx use their own reentry vehicles instead of just going to the space station for pickup and return with ISS equipment? by PromptCritical725

To add to that, the osris-Rex probe itself isn’t going to end its mission on return to earth. It’s just dropping off the reentry vehicle and heading back off into space where it will be targeted to flyby the asteroid apophis (the one that will have a very close earth encounter in the late 2020’s). This wouldn’t be possible if it slowed down to earth orbital speeds

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johnnycobbler17 t1_j5yswct wrote

Reply to Ask Anything Wednesday - Economics, Political Science, Linguistics, Anthropology by AutoModerator

What would happen if everyjob had a labor union amd collective bargining? Would things be more fair across the board for workers? Would everything in the world become unaffordable? Would it help to combat wealth inequaility or blow up and collapse on itself? Anything else i havent thought of? I apologize for poor spelling and grammer, i can only see half of my keyboard.

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TheKvothe96 t1_j5ypmph wrote

Reply to How hot is the steam coming out of nuclear power plants? by ivy-claw

Temperature of the steam is not that important because it depends on the generator system each nuclear central has. Maybe a bigger nuclear central has lower steam temperature but higher flow so the important point is how many energy is generated in the reactor.

Even that number is not important because it depends again on the generator system. So the data to compare nuclear plants is not how many heat they generate but how many electricity they do generatei in a year (maintenance stops can be quite long).

Largest nuclear plant in 2019: "Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s (TEPCO) Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in Japan is currently the world’s largest nuclear power plant, with a net capacity of 7,965MW".

https://www.power-technology.com/features/feature-largest-nuclear-power-plants-world/

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Far-Contact7531 t1_j5yn7gh wrote

Reply to Is it possible for me to develop a cold from a virus i was exposed to before qnd fought off and/or been gone latent in my body without being exposed to other sick people? How long can cold viruses be latent in the body with the ability to reactivate? by sewcrazy4cats

There are a number of viruses that are never flushed out of the body and they remain in the body after infection. In certain conditions they can manifest years after the initial disease has passed. But that is very rare. Flu viruses, RSV are not able to linger in the body.

If symptoms re-emerge days (5-6 days tops) after the initial symptoms have gone away, then either the body hasn't really recovered from the infection or it's another type of infection on top of the initial viral infection (bacterial infection of the upper respiratory system.or maybe even in the lungs for example) or it wasn't a cold from the get-go, it was a cold-like infection.

So best to talk to a doctor.

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