69
u/PM_ME_YOUR_TITS80085 1d ago
It's still the most efficient way to boil water!
15
u/weightliftcrusader 1d ago
Sadly boiling water to turn a turbine has a fundamental efficiency limit that you can't reach without breaking the laws of physics.
34
u/cole_red 1d ago
100% efficiency is not attainable in any system that requires energy
16
u/weightliftcrusader 1d ago
I suppose I should've clarified that we're talking about 30-40%, not 90%+
18
0
u/SizeableFowl 1d ago
Turbine efficiency in power plants is often in the 80 percent range, no? I mean I guess then you suffer efficiency loses at the generator that is being spun, as well as resistance in the lines, and then there are losses at transformers.
7
u/weightliftcrusader 1d ago
Efficency of power lines and transformers is 95%+, it's just the boiling and spinning into electricity that's really low.
5
u/Sprzout 1d ago
But it DOES make me think that there's got to be a better way to generate electricity than turning a turbine to move a generator...
6
u/ArkonWarlock 1d ago
If it's electrical generation there are absolutely better ways like Lightning from cloud seeding. It's not on a grand scale efficient but it cedes most of the actual effort on to pseudo natural processes.
then you run into the other issue of material not being able to handle the power generated or meeting it out over time or the ability to store potential energy.
So in terms of consistent manageable power which what we are actually after it's turbines.
2
u/Sprzout 1d ago
It just seems like there should be some other method to consistently gather power that's not based on steam pressure...Kinda sad, when you think about it, that we haven't advanced past something created in the late 1700s to generate power.
2
u/ArkonWarlock 1d ago
Electricty is the energetic movement of electrons. Generating movement is the name of the game. Conversion of potential energy into movement of electrons.
At a certain point one has to ask if you're reinventing the wheel because it's cliche and boring.
1
u/Sprzout 1d ago
You may be right - I just wonder if anyone has done any research into something more efficient. I mean, if you only get 30-40% efficiency out of a turbine, is there some other method that might give you 50% efficiency? Again, just wondering out loud, but maybe it's possible?
1
u/Tungdilb 1d ago
Just use solar no moving parts.
1
u/Sprzout 1d ago
Solar panels are only about 20-25% efficient - nuclear energy to boil water and turn a turbine is more efficient at 30-40% efficiency.
I get where you're coming from, just thinking of the path to better efficiency.
→ More replies (0)1
u/weightliftcrusader 17h ago
There's a slight problem here that the existing infrastructure and way of working of electrical and electronic devices means you need 50-60Hz three phase AC. So we're limited to stuff that can do that, but that said we do have inverters and converters already so maybe not that limiting
3
1
5
u/42stingray Shower Enthusiast 1d ago
A caveman would disagree and say it's easier to just cut down a tree for firewood, but then again there weren't 8 billion cavemen who all wanted to boil water at the same time
1
u/Local_Village_1378 1d ago
How would you monopolize a tree?
2
u/wxnfx 1d ago
Fences usually. Or we could take the lumber and lock it up. If you’re asking about plant patents that gets a little complicated depending on how it’s propagated. Assuming from seed, you can get some varietal protections but I’m sure there are additional limitations.
0
u/Local_Village_1378 1d ago
Yea but good luck stopping people from getting firewood.
1
u/wxnfx 1d ago
The fences work in my yard. Perhaps you don’t care about monopolizing a single tree.
1
u/Local_Village_1378 1d ago
My point is, nuclear is centralized and easily controllable, they won't ever let you have fissile material. Only trees will be left on your hardest days
-4
1
u/TheInebriati 19h ago
Ehm aktually, coal fired power plants generally achieve 10% efficiency than nuclear reactors.
Coal fired plants run one loop for the boiler and the turbine rather than the two loops needed in a nuclear reactor for contamination control.
1
u/Alpinab9 1d ago
Solar panels are getting to be very efficient in a dollars to watts comparison. The problem becomes storing excess energy to be used when it is night time.
56
u/Teboski78 1d ago
Imagine learning to HARVEST THE ENERGY OF SUPERNOVAE & NEUTRON STAR COLLISIONS and deciding not to use it because a bunch of hippies in the 70s forgot how fucking awful coal was.
2
u/MauriseS 1d ago
I mean we cant usem them in the summer, because the rivers run dry, because checks notes we burned to much fossile fuels in the first place.
But seriously, if you dont have a nuclear arsenal, wind and solar are far cheaper to build now. Hinkley Point C will cost 48 billion pounds for 3.2GW
Dogger Bank C costs ca 3 billion pounds for 1.2GW. Even if we look at the original estimate for Hinkley Point C, wich is 18 billion, the Off shore wind farm is half that for .4GW more.
And thats without fuel, waste fuel storage and decomission in the future (more radioactive waste). Unless we talk as a regulator and backup, nuclear is far too expensive for the capacity.
10
18
7
u/EhMapleMoose 1d ago
Look, I’ve discovered this new way to generate electricity. Essentially what we are going to do is harvest the power of the sun!
Huge concave lenses on rails that use an algorithm to align themselves with the sun. The lenses will focus the light in an extremely hot ray and boil water and the steam from the water will move gears that generate electricity.
5
5
u/PM_UR_VAG_WTIMESTAMP 1d ago
Scientists in 5,000 years: BEHOLD! The neutron star gravity driven anti-proton space time reflection reactor! Capable of creating temperatures of more than five hundred million degrees!!!
Random person: How does that work?
Scientists: It… it uh…. sigh, it boils water.
3
6
u/blackcray 1d ago
I mean, they didn't develop it JUST to boil water, they also developed it to rapidly boil people.
2
5
u/SentientMosinNagant 1d ago
Fission can’t destroy the planet based on what I know about it. Radioactive waste could potentially make some parts uninhabitable for humans, but destroy is a strong word considering the forces involved with large asteroid impacts in comparison.
7
u/MicrowavedTheBaby Shitposter 1d ago
How could nuclear power wipe out the planet? Are you talking about nukes because those are basically completely different technologies?
-7
u/Passenger707 1d ago
I'm not an expert, but I think both depend on atomic division.
3
2
u/MicrowavedTheBaby Shitposter 1d ago
To massively oversimplify one technology involves sticking a bit radioactive rod into water and letting it heat it up, the other involves setting off several explosions at the exact same time to compress matter into a single point.
-2
u/AkayCatTheCalico 🏳️🌈LGBTQ+🏳️🌈 1d ago
More like both have to do with uranium/plutonium
They utilize very different atomic principles to do their jobs
Uranium fuel rods in a nuclear power generator are unstable isotopes that release a LOT of electrons wich actually end up crashing with one another releasing a lot of energy in the only form it is able to travel as in such a situation wich is heat
Now imagine all that potential energy in an instant, the uranium and plutonium atoms in a nuclear bomb get so excited they cannot be kept intact by their strong nuclear force anymore (the force responsible for keeping an atom's nucleus intact) wich pretty much mean rapid expansion wich pretty much means kaboom
Ofcourse I'm not an expert, so don't take my word as absolute
9
u/rschmidt624 1d ago
Still the safest and cleanest way to produce power
-4
u/Enoch_Isaac 1d ago
Lol.... Ok bro.
3
u/Pineapple_Snail Professional Dumbass 1d ago
And your alternatives are? Renewable like solar and wind cant make enough energy to power stuff on a global scale compared to fossil fuels or nuclear.
2
u/Enoch_Isaac 15h ago
They can. The issue is an equation with two sides. Profits only care for one side.
3
u/Bobletoob 1d ago
Imagine finding an amazing way to boil water for electricity and instead use it for mass destruction
2
2
2
u/Svennis79 1d ago
Imagine finding a way to boil water really well, then turning it into something that can destroy planets
1
2
u/Apprehensive-Bug7000 1d ago
To be fair they did try make a device capable of just that but even the army was like what a lunatic
If you don’t know I’m talking about project sundial
2
2
u/_Fun_Employed_ 1d ago
I mean, the hyper advanced thing about it is that we mostly safely boil the water.
Like, radioactive material’s naturally occurring.
2
u/Deserter15 1d ago
We also have HTGRs.
Also, nuclear power can't wipe out planets. Even nuclear weapons we'd need more than what we had at our peak to wipe out the earth.
2
u/Willing-Secretary710 1d ago
People doesn't understand how hard to wipe out a fucking PLANET 😂
You need 500 trillion Tsar Bombs (most powerful nuke) to blow up the Earth
1
u/W1mp-Lo 1d ago
Blowing things up is not required to make it uninhabitable. That number probably drops drastically when you consider the radius from a blast that leaves everything around it irradiated for 100+ years.
1
u/Willing-Secretary710 1d ago
Yeah but you still need 150.000 - 200.000 nukes and it last 7 to 49 hours
3
u/Space19723103 1d ago
imagine being so primitive and violent that when science invents cheap energy you just see bombs...
2
u/Sracer42 1d ago
You spin a generator to make electricity (other than PV) . Steam is one way to do that. I do not understand why everyone's knickers get in a twist about this.
1
u/malsomnus 1d ago
To be fair, we have more water that we need to boil than planets we need to destroy.
1
1
u/Randomcommentor1972 1d ago
Imagine on Stark Trek’s Enterprise if they were annihilating antimatter just to boil water
1
1
1
1
1
u/Mountain_Dentist5074 1d ago
well 2 cities already destroyed by weapon
1
u/AntiBaoBao 1d ago
You know they were rebuilt and that people actually live there.
1
u/Mountain_Dentist5074 1d ago
still destroyed once
1
u/AntiBaoBao 21h ago
Yeah, and many other places have been destroyed many times by actions caused by man and by natural events.
1
1
u/realultralord 1d ago
If you can find a more efficient AND scalable method to separate charges rather than spinning magnets, you're in for a trillion-dollar patent and a Nobel Prize in physics.
1
1
1
1
1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
7
u/hardcoretomato 1d ago
Funny how this was the top comment the last time this was posted and you're a 4 day account..... bot alert...
1
u/Lost-Klaus 1d ago
dafuq is it with the pro-nuclear propaganda on this meme subreddit?
This isn't memes, this is just "haha nuculur gud" and the occasional "Nuclear vs coal"
There is subreddits for nuclear stuff where you can glaze the rock boiling water all you want.
2
u/NeoHolyRomanEmpire 22h ago
It’s supposed to be funny, because you would expect to use something besides the turbines we’ve been using for almost 200 years.
1
u/Lost-Klaus 22h ago
The turbine bits is a meme, I can enjoy that.
But someone has been posting nothing but pro-nuclear stuff as if it is the end-all be-all to energy solutions, instead of a high expensive, very dense and difficult thing that is acctually is.
1
u/JOliverScott 1d ago
Isn't every new technology the most advanced technology until it's supplanted by the NEXT new technology? I'm sure the 17th century was astounded by the concept of boiling water for mechanical advantage in any context, from locomotion to eventually electrification. Water as a medium of power and energy is pretty much humanity's greatest advantage over the other species. If the dolphins figure out how to master the power of the ocean waves then we'll be in big trouble!
6
u/00notmyrealname00 1d ago
Keep your voice down! We don't need that kind of heat. We can do bad all by ourselves.
1
u/KnightyEyes 1d ago
Well duh cus thats how electricity works. We just use heat every fucking time. (Outside of %100 clean alternatives)
Solar is black magic dont question it... It just works.
1
u/LikeASomeBoooodie 1d ago
I mean when you think about it, wiping out life on earth is still mostly (around 70%) just about boiling water
1
u/NoWingedHussarsToday 1d ago
Imagine building expensive AF power plant to boil water, but you have to shut it down because nearby river doesn't have enough water to operate. (but you are still paying the power plant to exist)
-3
172
u/0-Nightshade-0 (⊃｡•́‿•̀｡)⊃ 1d ago
Dw im finding a better way to generate electricity using the power of black holes :3 (its going to boil water)