Breazeale Nuclear Reactor Start up, 500kW, 1MW, and Shut Down
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- Опубліковано 15 вер 2024
- ANNOTATED VERSION: • Breazeale Nuclear Reac...
Hope you enjoy!
GoPro footage of the Penn State research reactor. The sound is pretty annoying during the sped up section of the video. Recommend just turning sound off.
Many questions are answered in detail in the comments.
If this continues to get interest I would be happy to make more videos of the reactor and radiation in general. I enjoy teaching people about nuclear power and other technologies.
ANNOTATED VERSION: • Breazeale Nuclear Reac...
you're pretty good at holding your breath
Dat nuclear reactor ambient sound at 500kw. Like im in a starship engineering section or something.
That what I was thinking! Looks and sounds so sci-fi. Amazing video.
Nemo Reem i think what you hear is cooking water.
Florian Jaklitsch or boiling water.
Go listen to Elite: Dangerous engine sound clips.
Great footage, so rare to be able to see something like this, many thanks for sharing it!
You're welcome!
Alex Landress I can tell you're an engineer, English isn't your forte. *you're welcome*.
Lol at the Grammar Nazi. I bet you're super fun at parties 😀
My two cents, in this particular case, I don't think he was really being a grammar Nazi. As a self-admitted grammar Nazi who happens to know many, and be the offspring of, engineers, they do tend to suck at spelling. I saw my dad spell Jurassic "Jurasek" one time. I LOL'd!
This is undoubtedly the best video I have seen thus far. Thanks for sharing it.
Alex Laurence Thanks! Maybe I will take some more video of the reactor soon.
NOW I FULLY UNDERSTAND HOW IT ALL WORKS. THANK YOU :)
no need for school
+Moris Doehmann Day be called Cherenkov Radiation. You see The electrons are moving faster than light thru a medium causing a shock wave.(NOT FASTER THAN C OR PHOTONIC VELOCITY IN A VACUME AS NOTHING IS FASTER THAN C)
Beautiful vantage point on the core, and I love how the GoPro camera sensor picks up some occasional direct radiation signals (sparkles), particularly at 1 MW.
In the zoomed in portion at 1MW you can see quite a few of them. It actually took me awhile to recognize it.
Thank you for filming it! I've always wanted to see what happens near the reactor core.
The fact that this only has 733 views is a terrible injustice.
More people are watching!
what are the radiation levels?
45k views? 741 upvotes? ;p
AxelPLasg Not bad for a video I didnt even intend on making public
almost 70k
Cherenkov radiation is hauntingly beautiful.
"If this continues to get interest I would be happy to make more videos of the reactor and radiation in general. I enjoy teaching people and changing minds about nuclear power and other technologies."
Yes, please do that, and explain it in the vid!
Amazing to see that. It is just like a giant kettle. You can even spot the control rods being raised and lowered to control the output. Many thanks for sharing.
Yo, someone call Thor. We've found the Tesseract
We got to see this reactor being fired up in 1992 with our advanced physics class trip. It was the neatest thing, and I still tell people about it. We got to see the wd-40 thread test film and had access to the neutron howitzer to do particle counts. A lot of people are surprised when I tell them there is a nuclear reactor right in State College. That's a cool job you have there.
Arnold's Design cool
Magnificent. it's so beautiful to see how power of atom tamed in such simple and elegant form. Triumph of human mind, but still so much left to achive.
you can see the radiation as little white dots appearing during the 1MW portion :D
The Cherenkov radiation is so beautiful. I like this video and hope to see more of it.
Holy crap I was not expecting that blue glow! Would I seriously be able to see that with my naked eye!? It looks so incredible it seems fake, really amazing stuff!
I love that you can see the radiation effecting the sensors in the camera, the little dots that suddenly pepper the image.
In certain way, this video makes me remember my childhood when I was playing Half-Life, in the Lambda Complex chapter
This should be a live stream! I think I would not get tired of watching this.... Ever!
action at 1:40 and 5:10
Thanks for adding some time stamps. I didn't really expect many people to watch this video, just needed to get the raw footage up for some people to see. Maybe I will actually edit a video with this footage...
YES! please do, this is awesome, and the comment section is as interesting as the video!
something similar to a gamma ray flash at any moment?
Cropped, it would make a great screensaver for any device.
The sound.... perfect "white noise" for sleeping.
The blue glow is due to the charged particles traveling faster then the phase velocity of light in that particular liquid. You can actually see the huge amount of particles glowing as they are escaping into the surrounding liquid. Awesome.
Beautiful! This Cherenkov blue light is so hypnotic.
If you skip from 3:40 to 6:50 you can see that rods have moved, are these control rods?
Way, way cool!. I got a tour about 30 years ago when I was student. Only thing missing is a video of a prompt critical event. I was told it looked like a flashbulb going off at the bottom of the pool.
Well done on the video, and THANK YOU to the folks who allowed you to post it on UA-cam.
it's always so impressive to be able to actually see the radiation picked up by the sensor (or film in the old days) in the darker areas!
"UFO" (Unidentified Floating Object(lol) at 06:40 from left to right mid screen.
It's interesting, eerie and sort of frightening all at the same time. I've finished watching and still feel somewhat freaked.
For those who don't believe this is real, whenever radiation hits a camera you see specs of white because it damages the material inside it, since this is a high quality gopro, the outter shelling blocks alpha and beta radiation, when you see the specs this would be gamma radiation, hence the large amount of water.
Thanks for posting this. It's fascinating to see a reactor actually operating. Now just to do some research on the differences between your research reactor, the one at NC State University, and the one just up the road from me (Shearon Harris). Thanks again!
I was a reactor operator in the US Navy. This video is probably one of the best videos I have ever seen showing Cherenkov radiation. Really, really awesome video! By the way, I assume this is some test facility somewhere? I have no idea of any facility where you could drop a camera into a pool and film a reactor going critical to 1MW, particularly with it not being in a pressure vessel. This is just freaking awesome!
I was also a Navy reactor operator. This is the research reactor on the Penn State main campus. It's just used as a large neutron source for research and commercial testing.
Actually seeing the Cherenkov radiation glow is amazing. I have never seen a picture of it much less a video. It's like something out of a Science fiction story but real life.
just been reading your reactions to comments, you get my subscription just for being a nice, interesting guy.
p.s if you do more of these videos, annotation or a voice over of the stages would be interesting. I'm interested but really i don't know what i'm looking at here
Starting at around 7:00, you can see some white flashes, especially as they close in on a portion of the shot. Tiny little one or two pixel sized white flashes. Those are from the radiation hitting the cmos chip right?
It will be exactly that.
oxycontiin you can actually see them the whole time
็Thanks for the footage! Please do take more videos like this. Very educational. Such a rare opportunity to get to see how this thing works. I'd been spending time reading all the top comments and your clarification.
looks like the Tesseract from the Avengers :D
nice video.
Thanks! It's pretty cool to see the blue glow.
worked with one in 1985-6
I worked with reactors in the US Navy, went through training on a submarine prototype that started out in shipyard and made it to another major overhaul in shipyard on an aircraft carrier. Even then, I did not see this level of detail and beauty of a fission reaction. Thanks for the rare treat to see this. BTW, I see some lines that go down towards the core in between the control rods, what are the purpose of those? Also, are you limited to short runs or is there a way to reject heat that I cannot see here?
I was also in the nuclear Navy, submarines though.
The other tubes going down to the reactor are tubes that we can drop experiments down in to, and also some conduit going to temperature detectors in the core.
We can run for long periods of time. There is a cooling system for the pool (not shown). If running at full power, the pool reaches an equilibrium temperature of about 26C.
Amazing video! You can actually see the control rods going in to shut down the reactor. Thanks for the post, Alex!
Never knew (and still have it hard believing) that a reactor lights up a pretty, but eerie, cosmic blue! I really enjoyed watching this.
This is one of the coolest things I have ever seen, thank you for posting!
Wow this is fantastic footage. If you notice the random white pixels of light that pop on and off are accentually stray electrons hitting the CCD of the camera and causing an overload on the sensor.
Alex is figuring it's a gamma ray from N16 wandering near the camera and then shedding. But I'm thinking the odds of a gamma ray hitting the sensor are low, whereas an electron has a pretty good chance of being intercepted by the sensor, I'm thinking almost 1 to 1. And flipping the bit to a maximum all white is exactly what we would expect an electron to do.
Would a gamma ray even trip that photonic sensor? If it did, that means a molecule spilled electrons and got damaged, didn't it? Is there damage now to the sensor? Spots maybe?
I like electrons a lot better.
That Cherenkov radiations is just...beautiful. Absolutely stunning. One of the best videos out there hands down.
Only one question - how the hell camera survived the gamma radiation this little beast must output? Or I'm missing something.
Also, how do you handle camera afterwards? I would imagine it could have bits of radioactive decay on it and everything.
The good thing about gamma radiation is that it doesn't make things radioactive like neutron radiation. The camera can handle a lot of gamma radiation before it fails. I would think that the light sensor would fail if exposed to very high gamma flux, but that would really take a lot.
Right, thanks! I thought gamma will still leave things radioactive after exposure.
So, there's no neutron radiation of any kind in this particular reactor? You'd have to fuse or break up elements violently for that to occur I'd imagine.
When gamma rays hit camera sensors, they create bright specs or streaks (depending on the angle compared to the sensor). Look in the darker areas, like the left, and you can see them while it's running. You can watch the gamma exposure happen in real time.
Alex, thank you for showing this, and for all the explanations. Highly educational!
Although science and technology are (and need to be) purely rational things, there are always moments of amazement... Once had the opportunity to stand next to the spent fuel pit of a commercial nuclear power plant and will never forget the blue glow of the Cherenkov radiation I saw down there.
Please keep up your outstanding contributions, and best wishes for your career!
I like how you can see the sparkles on the video as the reactor is running, radiation hitting the image sensor :)
this is incredible. I didn't realise you could use a camera film so close to an active nuclear reactor. fantastically interesting
Incredible video with excellent quality. Water is so pure it looks like it's not even there
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE make more content on radioactivity & Nuclear Physics. I absolutely LOVE the bottom of the periodic table AKA "the Actinide Series." My favorite things include the beautiful blue Cherenkov glow. Well everything that either sheds Alphas to go down the tables scale or Bata that magically turns Stuff Like Neptunium into plutonium
That thats even a thing is crazy. This video and a friend explaining it answered a lot of questions. Awesome blue glow
When the reactor turns on, you can see little white spots on the camera's sensor from the radiation!! So cool!
Beta particles right? Not gamma rays.
gamma or xrays
congrats on hitting 1MW, best I can get from mine was 981kw - adding a few more fuel rods when I get home from school tomorrow. I have to work quickly though, this assignment has to be turned by the end of next week.
Very cool video. I just wish you hadn't sped up the startup and shutdown. I for one am a patient guy and it would be nice to see it all in real time. Still, very much appreciated. Plus, it's kinda cool to hear the pumps, because until now I had no idea what a reactor would sound like. I figured the reaction itself would be virtually silent, and most noise would be from the cooling pumps and ancillaries.
I live 16 miles away from one of these and always wondered, thanks.
The blue Cherenkov Radiation is beautiful. It never gets boring thinking that small cube radiates 1MW of power. Think ~500 kettles boiling at once. (2 kilowatt each)
I love this! Please make more videos of the inner workings of a reactor. I have always been curious.
Thanks for the clear answers.
1) I didn't know you can have moderator mixed with the fuel. Neat. Sounds like it moves in a self regulating direction. As it heats up the neutrons, it's automatically reducing the neutron cross section. Pretty slick.
2) WOW. Deliberate power excursions. Exciting stuff. I looked up your "prompt critical". Spectacular video there! I see the pipes(?) jumping. Do the high power excursions make noise?
3) Understood.
5) I was just wondering what the control system looks at to know where to position the control rods moment-to-moment. . I think you've really answered what it is, it's the neutron flux since you've explained that the power output can be accurately known using just the neutron flux.
I'm happy to see universities with such nice facilities. Thanks again for sharing.
1) It is very unique to this design of reactor. It's needed because we have the ability to pulse, like you saw in the other video. The negative reactivity feedback in a commercial reactor due to changing of moderator density is a delayed effect. The ZrH response to an up power is more immediate.
2) The pipes you see moving are the control rods. The power excursion doesnt cause any noise directly. We cause the power excursion by pneumatically 'shooting out' a control rod to a specified height. That air is what you heard. We have 4 control rods. 3 are held up by electromagnet and the other is held up by air pressure. To pulse, we go critical on the 3 electromagnetic rods. We then drive a stopper out to a specified point for the air driven rod. When we initiate the pulse in the control system, 85 psi of air is placed under a piston which shoots the rod up against the stopper.
The pulse happens very quickly. The control system scrams all of the rods within 5 seconds of initiating the pulse. That is the second round of noise you hear (air being vented to atmosphere). And you see the control rods drop in to the core (they look like pipes).
5) Correct. The neutron detectors on the back of the core are the primary indication of power. The control system adjusts rod heights based on a few things, but mainly the current power level and how fast power is changing (reactor period or start up rate, 2 different ways of quantifying the rate of power change).
PSU is very lucky to have the facility. We got it mainly because the president of PSU at the time was president Eisenhower's brother. It's good to have friends in high places I guess.
Can you use your go-pro for normal daily tasks now, or does it glow?
The GoPro is fine. Works like a charm, and it's contamination free!
Keith Cress a
i wish i could meet you one day cause i love your content. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!!
Wow, such an awesome footage of Cherenkov radiation. I was able to see one in person, in a Polish "Maria" reactor in Świerk (you can google it), but this footage is just freaking awesome. Thanks for the upload, mate.
This video brings back memories of when I was a student and had labs in this building. I remember the first time walking in the building and the astonishment I felt that this reactor is just in a big open pool with no pressure vessel. Awesome video! any chance you'll post video of a reactor pulse?
Is the outgassing part just the water boiling around the rods? Wouldn't steam in those bubbles be radioactive?
There are a few things happening. Above 200kW, nucleate boiling begins to occur on the cladding of the fuel rods. The bubbles from nucleate boiling don't last long. After they break away from the cladding they collapse in the bulk of the fluid channels. This is good for heat transfer.
Many of the bubbles are from the dissociation of water. In the high neutron flux, water is split in to hydrogen and oxygen. Any sort of radioactive isotopes contained in the bubbles either decay or are low level and well under NRC limits.
Thanks, very educational!
Do you have to vent out the hydrogen and oxygen to reduce a risk of fire? Or concentrations are low?
Concentrations are very low. We also have to be running exhaust fans in the reactor bay any time the reactor os operating. If there is a problem with the exhaust system while the reactor os operating, it will automatically shut down.
Because of the small size and low risk, our reactor is not in a containment like a commercial reactor. We have 'confinement,' meaning that the air through the reactor bay is controlled (and kept at a negative pressure) but it is far from air tight. In the event of a high radiation condition, the normal exhaust is automatically shut down and all air leaving the reactor bay goes through a sophisticated filtering system.
how many homes can it power?
I stumbled on this by accident but it has given me an amazing lesson in nuclear power. Thank you. We Are PENNSTATE
"The beautiful glow" "We need MORE"
I have watched this many times recently and am still shocked each time I watch it as to how amazing this truly is and how small it is producing this much power (yes I know it's just a demo)
Amazing video. Thank you. For those like me who do not really understand what is happening, please do another video explaining soon!
Now that's cool. I think this has NC State's reactor beat in the cool factor department.
This is pretty cool, and certainly unique. Please post more. Some with narration or captions would be great.
Wow, I've wanted to see something like this for decades, nice video!
Thanks!
love how you could see the white dots from the radiation on the camera.
Ahh, so awesome. I love the pixel-sized crackles of visible radiation you can see every so often.
I like how you can see little specks of white flash on the screen from the radioactive particles.
Thank you very much for showing. I've driven by the "Nuclear Boobies" (San Onofre) hundreds of times and was always curious about the inside of a reactor. My buddy works for a RO water company and its amazing to see the water so crystal clear.
The Beautiful Cherenkov glow makes me want to swim down to it.
This is interesting. A pretty antiquated technology as we move to natural fusion, but still cool (and intimidating).
I love that you can see the radiations effect on the GoPros sensor.
Your comment about prompt critical is interesting (never heard of it before). A video about that would be awesome, just watched WSJ's video showing it but they don't explain much. I never knew the speed at which the rods were removed would cause a spike in power generation, I just figured the rods were just steady state energy producers.
I like the tiny light flashes of light as the radiation (presumably beta or gamma particles?) hits the CCD of the camera.
I would like to see a tour of all of what's up top near the end. Including the rest of the systems for that matter. Very nice vid!
The blue glow is light boom. Photons were slowed down by the water and intensified the brightness.
This is easliy one of the coolest videos on the internet. Is that cherenkov radiation? It looks so surreal
Some people might not know that water is actually the best protection from radiation. Then comes stone/cement etc. Fun thing about this is when the water becomes radioactive, you would sink like a stone to the bottom if you or any item would fall in. You wont be able to swim or do anything to get up.
Well it doesnt turn into anti-gravity, where air would gather at the bottom. So of course the air goes up since it´s lighter than the water. But the water becomes "heavy" at these pools and have no surface tension. So if you fall in, you wouldn´t have the normal swimming to support you back up.
Very cool video, we need a lot more educational content like this on youtube! I have a few questions though:
1) What specific experiment was being conduct at the time of filming, you mentioned something about nitrogen isotopes ?
2) Is this a thermal neutron or a fast neutron reactor, and if it is a thermal neutron reactor, what is the moderator, is it the (heavy ?) water ?
3) What type of fuel is this reactor using, is it the same as in commercial PWRs ?
Thanks in advance from a 18-year-old who's going to study engineering next year.
Wow! I just stumbled on this vid, and found it fascinating. I actually read all the comments! My question for you is - since this is a research reactor not generating electricity, what is the nature of the research you are doing? If you can share that. Thanks for posting this vid. Great stuff!!
all those neutrinos streaming out too ...slipping past the pool, your camera, the university, the planet ... mind blowing. Have any neutrino detectors "seen" your reactor that you are aware of ?
Not that I know of. I have a feeling it would be hard to pick up a 1MW research reactor among all of the power reactors operating around the world and under the ocean.
Please make this video again in 4K!! there are so many details that are missed due to the lower resolution! But its still a great video non the less!
Scariest part is just off screen is the control room with the old dot-matrix printer spitting out the super important information. Retina scanners for the doors, but 70s tech for the critical bits lol
That dot-matrix printer is a beast! The control console was updated in the 90's. The safety system is still the analog old stuff.
Alex Landress ah, I only gathered what I got from my short tour there. I hope to intern there at some point during my semesters here
The Cherenkov radiation makes it look pleasantly sci-fi. Awesome and quite rare footage!
Maaan I'm wishing I could see one of these operating for real. It's kind of an unofficial bucket list item to watch a research reactor turn on... maybe even be the one to push the button if the operators would let me.
this is amazing I can't believe I am watching something like this. it's a privilege. thank you for sharing with us.
This is really cool (ok, technically not very cool)! The 2:00-6:00 view is framed very artfully btw. I really want the thorium configuration to get traction. It's what the world needs (+solar)
The soothing hue of Cherenkov Blue ...
That blue glow, if I didn't know it's real, I'd think it's a Hollywood special effect. How can something that surreal actually be real? It's beautiful!
Good video. We've learnt so much from nuclear accidents that generation IV nuclear reactors can't melt down, utilising laws of nature (like gravity) to shut them down in any situation that goes out of control. The public are rightly scared of nuclear power, we need to publicise the new techniques so that fear will transform into calm.
why would you want to consider making it a private video? we all deserve to see this as its public money and demand for the product that gives you guys the tools for the job. glad we got to see it.
It was going to be private because it was for me and a group of 3 other people to edit for a school project. I had no idea people would actually watch it. I didnt spend any time editing the video or add explanation. Now that I have an idea of the interest, I plan on doing an edited video that actually has words.
That's cool seeing the control rod being inserted and slowing the reaction
Awesome video. I always wanted to see live footage of a reactor in activity. Thanks for sharing. Have you got any readings of radioactivity on your Go Pro after that? I have seen a few white sparks indicating ionizing radiation that hit the sensor of your camera.
So I noticed that there are little white pinpricks on the video is that radiation hitting the camera sensor? This is a really awesome video thanks for sharing!
Freaking awesome, I bet that GoPro is glowing now...
Ever throw a penny in the pond for good luck?
People complain about nuclear power and energy but when something educational about it comes out they refuse to look at it
I would love to apnea dive into the reactor well while it is in operation, just to make a nice video and get to see this beautiful cherenkov radiation with my own eyes. don't worry... i am radiation tolerant. xD
rodv92 You too have the rad-resistance perk?
When you say 1MW and 500kW, what exactly are your meassuing? My understanding is that in power generating reactors this would be a meassurement of the output of tthe turbines given a specific heat output from the reactor. However as you say, you are not in the business of turning turbines so what do you use as your measurement for power? Is it just how much power this would make turning turbines if it had turbines to turn?
Great video, thank you for uploading it and taking the time to answer questions. Nuclear power education needs to happen. So sick of people yelling about how its the devil but when you ask them, they don't actually know how it works in the least.
The 1MW and 500kW are thermal power. The reactor is transferring that much heat to the surrounding water.
Commercial reactors have both an electrical output rating and a thermal power rating. Most people will know the electrical rating, but the thermal ratings are typically less known. The thermal rating can be estimated by taking the electrical rating and multiplying it by 3.3. So a 1000 MW reactor will be able to output 3300 MW of heat. Converting the heat from the reactor to electricity is only about 33% efficient.
We calibrate out instruments by operating at 1MW until the pool reaches a stable temperature, and then calculate the amount of heat leaving the pool through our cooling system.
What are the primary causes of loss in the the system (Rankine cycle right?)
Awesome! Thank you.
There is no rankine cycle here. We are simply dissipating all heat to the bulk fluid and then operating a cooling system to transfer it (the heat) to water which goes to the sewer. There is no pressurized primary and secondary system, and were not spinning a turbine.
Yep I picked that up from other comments, I was asking about commercial systems. Above you referenced the efficiency of them, and I was wondering what causes the most significant loss of energy transfer in those systems?