Chapter 2 – Which describes the refuelling of a nuclear reactor
As we walked back over the grassy hills to Ponyville, Pinkie Pie decided to tell me a chapter of her life story. I listened with interest as the story of how Pinkie arrived in Ponyville was a legend. Like all legends there were an infinite number of variations, and while the version recalled by Pinkie Pie was not necessarily reliable, it was still a valuable testimony from a primary source.
“So after I got my cutie mark and knew that my destiny was to throw lots of parties and make everypony smile, I hit a problem. I was stony broke, and parties can be expensive, especially if you want to do it properly with lots of cool food and drink and games and streamers and fireworks and... yes I know you can still have a lot of fun with just a few bits, but I wanted to throw lots and lots of really big parties for all my friends, and everypony was my friend. So I had to find a super high paid job to support a wild party lifestyle. I briefly considered becoming a banker, but I didn't want to have to wear a moustache to work every day. I mean, once a week would be fun, but every day? Nah. Anyway they didn't invite me for interview. Then Marble told me that engineering was a well-paid profession, and I remember Granny Pie was always saying how hard it was to find a reactor engineer to service her fast breeder. So I looked into it, and it sounded fun. I signed up for a correspondence course in civil engineering and got my degree. Then I got a masters and doctorate, and a job commissioning new reactors. My first assignment was to install a new reactor at Sugarcube Corner. After that the Cakes offered me a job as on site engineer. Once I'd shown them that I was a responsible pony, they also let me bake cupcakes, and once I'd shown them that I was really really responsible, they let me babysit the twins.”
Recollecting these details of her career excited Pinkie to an even more energetic state than her normal character. She jumped higher and higher with each bound, sending her heavy saddlebags bouncing in the air. “Why did the Cakes need a nuclear reactor?” I asked.
“It's what powers all the ovens, and the lights and the cookie machines at Sugarcube Corner,” explained Pinkie. “And it's not just Sugarcube Corner, we provide hot water and electricity to all of Ponyville. Including your library.”
“I thought the electricity in Ponyville came from the hydroelectric dam.”
“Oh, that provides some. It used to provide all the power, but when the town grew bigger, and seven hour bubble baths became fashionable, we needed another generator. The critical point came a few years ago when the Cakes installed a new cookie factory on their lower ground floor, so they offered to house the new power plant in the basement. Actually that wasn't the first plan. They first built some big wind turbines. That was a complete fiasco. Pegasi kept flying into them. Then they would go and sulk in the clouds and didn't maintain the weather properly, so there was no wind.”
“How come I never heard about this before?”
“Oh, well I guess nopony thought it worth mentioning. That's sorta how it is with nuclear power plants. You only hear about them if something goes wrong.”
We soon reached Sugarcube Corner. Mr and Mrs Cake were rushing around as usual, balancing trays of baked goods on their heads with uncanny skill. Their baby foals were sitting on the floor throwing toy bricks around. Pinkie thrust her head down to their level grinning manically. “Hey Pound! Pumpkin! Ready to help me refuel the nuclear reactor?”
Carrot Cake gave her a stern look. “They need to take their nap very soon Pinkie. You can play with them later.”
Pinkie looked disappointed, but she just said, “Okay, I was just asking. Come on Twilight.”
Pinkie, with saddlebags, jumped through a doorway which I assumed led to the stairs to the basement. I smiled at Carrot Cake, then trotted after her, but as soon as I was through the doorway, I tripped over my hooves and found myself sliding down a smooth tube which spiralled downwards. A few seconds later this dumped me on the floor next to Pinkie Pie.
“Ugh,” I groaned as I picked myself up, “where did the stairs go?”
“Stairs are slow, boring, and potentially dangerous,” said Pinkie. “Every year, hundreds of foals are hurt falling down steps, many of them seriously. So I, Pinkie Safety-Conscious Pie, replaced them with slides, which are quicker, safer, and much more fun.”
I looked around the underground room. It was a large hall, with a high ceiling, brightly lit, and full of noisy machines. A complex gear system drove a series of conveyor belts across the room at several different levels, linking a selection of large shiny metal enclosures, decorated in flashing lights. Rope and pulley mechanisms moved heavy bags across the ceiling, while robotic claws grabbed these and tipped the contents in various chutes. Heavy duty pistons were driving some sort of industrial stamping, and a network of transparent hoses directed the flow of brightly coloured liquids. I stared at this complex monster trying to make sense of all the moving parts.
“Is this a nuclear reactor?” I asked.
“Nope,” replied Pinkie, “this is the Cookie factory floor.” She reached a hoof into a metal container and withdrew a piece of chocolate chip filled gingerbread, which she thrust into my mouth. “The reactor is one floor down.” She dived through another doorway. I followed, more cautiously than before, and slid down another spiral slide. This deposited us in a very small room with walls lined with pegs supporting white coats.
“Put on a lab coat,” said Pinkie, tossing me a white garment.
“Why do we need to wear these?” I asked.
“For fun,” she explained. “And it will keep the dust off your coat.”
“What's this room?” I asked after pulling the coat over my hooves. “Where is the reactor?”
“This is an air lock.” Pinkie pulled a lever on the wall, which caused a door to swing shut across the slide outlet. There was a short hissing sound, then another door on the opposite side of the room swung open. We walked through this into a dark room. I could see a large number of electronic indicator lights lit up in the darkness.
“Hang on,” said Pinkie, “Lemme find the light switch.”
She walked into the darkness and a moment later the lights flickered on, illuminating a small room packed full of equipment. Control panels were mounted against the walls, covered with arrays of buttons, knobs, switches, and indicator lights. Above these were panels of pressure gauges, dials and other meters. I could only guess the function of most of these, but after staring at the wall panels, I found my brain automatically trying to make sense of it, with partial success. Lines drawn on one panel appeared to represent water pipes, and the various gauges showed the pressure and temperature at different points, and whether a network of valves were open or closed.
I was taken aback by the scale of it. Many ponies, on seeing my basement for the first time, have expressed surprise at the amount of random technology it contains. Actually it just houses a small collection of scientific instruments and miscellaneous electronics which I grabbed when the Canterlot University Physics Department was having a clear out. More than most Ponyville residences, it's true, but nothing remarkable. In contrast, Pinkie's basement had this vast array of the latest sensor and control technology.
“Wow,” I said. “Can you talk me through how this all works?”
“Sure,” said Pinkie. “Come and look outside.”
She bounded through another door on the side of the control room. This led out onto a balcony, overlooking a large cavern with smooth metal walls. I could make out a large number of pipes, leading down to a large open tank of water, containing a cylinder with a domed cover, glowing with an eerie blue light. Not unlike the coloured aura of unicorn magic.
“That's the reactor core,” said Pinkie proudly. “It's in the water tank to keep it cool and to shield us from the radiation. It's a pity it's so radioactive – otherwise it would make a great plunge pool. It glows with that cool blue light.”
“Cherenhoof radiation,” I said. “It's producing energetic particles, which move through the water faster than the light, making it glow. A bit like a sonic boom.”
“Oh so that's what it is,” said Pinkie.
“Don't you understand it?” I asked. “I thought you were a nuclear expert.”
“I'm an engineer Twilight, not a scientist. I don't have to understand it – at least not one hundred percent – I just have to make it work.”
“So how do you make it work?”
“We pack the uranium fuel in rods in the middle. The U-235 atoms spit out fast neutrons. They would just whiz away, but they’re surrounded by water, which is a neutron moderator – it slows them down. Chocolate milk would work as well as water, and it tastes better, but that would be a waste of chocolate milk. The slow neutrons then hit other uranium atoms in other rods, and start a chain reaction, which makes it really really hot. Once it gets going, we control it by pushing the control rods into the core. They're made of a neutron sponge which sucks up the neutrons so it stops the reaction. We stop it completely by pushing the rods all the way in. It's like that now as we shut it down for the summer.”
“What stops it getting too hot?” I asked.
Pinkie pointed to a network of pipes connected to the reactor. “Cold water goes in, round and round the core, and comes out super-hot – it would be boiling except it's at a super high pressure. The hot water then heats more water making steam, which whooshes through a turbine making electricity, and then we cool it with cold water from the river, which then goes all around Ponyville to heat everypony's home, and then back in the river.
“So you have a series of cooling water circuits to transfer the heat out of the core,” I said.
“Yeah,” said Pinkie, “lots of pipes of hot water and steam all over the place. I made a few modifications to make extra use of it.”
“Modifications?”
“Yes, I added extra hot water and steam delivery pipes to the spa, since they need so much of it. And a milk steaming nozzle in the control room, so we can make some frothy coffee and hot chocolate.”
Pinkie procured a tin opener from a draw under the control panel, which was labelled 'snacks'. She then took the yellow and black tin cans out of her saddle bag, and proceeded to remove the lids by lying down on the floor, gripping each can with her rear legs, holding the can opener with between her fore hooves and twisting the handle with her teeth.
“Grrr,” she said through her teeth, “why'd they make these things so difficult to open.”
Eventually she had removed the lids from the tins. Each one was lined with a thick layer of lead on the inside, surrounding ceramic pellets. She then got to her hooves and tipped the contents of the tins into a plastic scoop on the top of a machine at the end of the control panel. She then pulled a lever. The machine proceeded to make a rattling sound and a few indicator lights flashed.
“That's the fuel rod packing machine,” said Pinkie. “It stacks the pellets into fuel rods.” A moment later the machine ejected a set of long thin black metal rods into a basket on the floor.
“And what's all this other equipment?” I asked, surveying a selection of high-tech boxes lined up along the counter.
“That’s a radiation dosimeter, so we can check if anything gets contaminated with radioactive material. And that's the readout for the neutron monitors and temperature sensors.”
“And this one?”
“That's the coffee machine.”
“Now,” said Pinkie, standing with her fore hooves on the control panel, grinning at the array of indicator lights and gauges, “we need to exchange the fuel. I think it's this button.” She pushed a rectangular panel with a hoof. There was a noise outside the cabin. I walked back onto the balcony and looked down to the reactor and saw an elaborate piece of mechanical engineering swing into action, like something made by the Flim Flam Brothers. A set of robotic limbs, fitted with mechanical claws, moved out of the walls. Each claw picked up a wrench from a toolbox, then plunged into the pool and set about removing a set of bolts in a ring around the reactor vessel. Once this was complete, the domed cover was removed, allowing us to look inside the underwater reactor core and see a glowing array of cylindrical rods.
Pinkie pressed another button and two robotic arms then reached into the core and pulled out the spent fuel rods, while another two brushed past me, through the door into the cabin and picked the newly assembled rods from the basket. These were carried down to the reactor and pushed into the vacant slots, while the glowing removed fuel was moved to one side, still under the water. This task completed, the robot set about closing up the vessel and tightening all the bolts. Pinkie walked out onto the balcony beside me.
“We'll leave a few old rods in there, so there's enough kick to get it started,” she said.
“What do you do with the spent fuel?” I asked. “It must be highly radioactive.”
“It is,” agreed Pinkie. “Very. Packed full of dangerously unstable transuranic elements. Enough to kill a pony if you get too close, and hot enough to burst into flames if it gets out of the water. We'll leave it here for a bit to cool off then take it back to the rock farm and keep it somewhere safe for two hundred thousand years or so.” She looked down a clipboard she held in a hoof. “Okay. Replace fuel rods – check.”
Pinkie bounced back into the control cabin. I paused for a moment staring down at the glowing spent fuel rods, trying to estimate the amount of heat that much radioactivity could produce. If the water was to disappear, and the rods were exposed to air, they would burst into flames and fill the air with radioactive smoke. I shuddered at the thought, then took a few deep breaths to calm myself. Nothing to fear. In a worst case scenario I could always teleport us out of here, and the air-tight room will contain the fire. Unless it was damaged by the heat. No, I said to myself. That won't happen. Pinkie knows what she's doing.
I walked into the control room where Pinkie was standing up against an array of buttons with a puzzled look. “Okay. Restart the reactor. How do we do this? I think it's this one.”
She pushed a button. Immediately a red light started flashing and an alarm sounded. Pinkie pushed it again to cancel the action. “Okay not that one... Let’s try this one.” She pushed a hoof against another control. This caused exactly the same effect. “Hmm, what's wrong?” she said.
“How many times have you refuelled a reactor?” I asked.
“This is the first time.”
“What?”
“Well, there's a lot of energy in uranium fuel, and we've not been running at full capacity, so it doesn't need refuelling very often... Oh I know, we need to first pressurise the primary coolant.” She twisted a knob and pulled a lever. There was a noise from outside as a pump started somewhere, and a moment later the pressure reading on numerous gauges on the panel in front of me started rising.
Once the pressure had stabilized, Pinkie pushed another button. “Now we can raise the control rods and get it going.” We both watched the panel in front of us, on which the position of the control rods in the reactor core was indicated by an array of tiny lights on top of a drawing of the assembly. Surrounding this was a set of meters giving the temperature and pressure of the water, and digital displays giving the radiation level, and various other instruments whose function I could only guess. As soon as the lights showed the control rods were partially out of the core, the digits on the radiation counters started changing faster and faster as the rate increased tenfold, and the thermometer readings shot up.
“Yay!” cried Pinkie. “We have fission!” She jumped up and bounced around the room as the panel lights flickered. Then with a satisfied smile she checked off another item on her clipboard.
“You want some coffee Twilight?”
“Err, okay.”
She took a bag of coffee beans from a cupboard below the control desk and poured this into the top of the coffee machine. She then stuck her head back in the cupboard. “Out of sugar. And I need to get some fresh milk. I'll just pop upstairs. Keep an eye on the reactor will you Twilight? Don't let it get too hot.” With this she trotted out of the cabin into the air-lock door.
“Pinkie!” I cried, but she had already closed the sound-proof door.
What was I supposed to do? Check the reactor didn't get too hot? How hot was too hot? According to the thermometers the water in the core was at about 250 degrees. That seemed pretty hot to me. And if it did get too hot, what was I supposed to do. I stared at the panel tracing the route of the various cooling water circuits. What was the right course of action in such an event?
My tried and tested way of dealing with any problematic issue is to read a book. I looked around control room and identified a small shelf above an array of levers. I went over and read the titles of the books. These included several guides to baking cupcakes, party planning, and keeping alligators as pets. I then spotted a more promising title and levitated it off the shelf: 'Pressurized Water Reactor: Users' Manual.'
The first page contained a note explaining that the reactor warranty only applied to defects in materials or workmareship. The ACME Corporation would not accept any liability due to damage from customer misuse. In particular the warranty did not apply to damage to the core resulting from an interruption of cooling water. I flipped through the booklet, skipping the first chapter on the assembly of the flat-pack components. The later chapters explained the operation of the plant. It assured me that everything should run in a safe stable way, provided the user followed the instructions.
Unfortunately I had a good imagination, and my mind was quickly thinking up ways in which things could go wrong. What if the control rods were jammed somehow? And what if there was some blockage stopping the flow of cooling water. I looked up from the manual and noticed that the temperature had risen to 290 degrees. My heart started pounding fast. Was it still rising? How high should I let it go before I should stop the reactor? If it got so hot that the fuel rods melted, then we would have no way of controlling it. A molten mass of highly radioactive material would melt through the vessel. Nuclear meltdown. Then if it reached the cold water, it would fill the room with steam, and there would be an explosion. No. We're in a sealed underground air-tight container, which can no doubt take a high pressure. And there must be safety valves to stop an explosion. So the worst that can happen is we would just be dumping tons of radioactive water into the river. Nothing to worry about. Stay calm Twilight. Anyway the fuel rods are made from zirconium, which doesn't melt until 1855 degrees, so it should be fine. I stared at the thermometer which had crept up to 292 degrees.
With a hissing sound, the airlock opened and Pinkie Pie bounded back into the room, balancing a tray on her head. “Cupcake?” she said.
I took one of the cakes without paying attention. “Pinkie,” I said, “is it too hot?”
Pinkie walked over to the panel. “Nope, just perfect for making good coffee. Hey Twilight you wanna see how to make the perfect cappuccino? I've been getting pretty good at it.”
My eyes kept flicking between the reactor temperature gauges and Pinkie Pie.
“The base of a good cappuccino is a good caffé espresso,” she said. “To make that we need some hot water, pressurized to about sixteen bar.” She flipped a switch on the control panel and watched as the pressure reading on one of the meters rose. Then she put two cups below a nozzle on the control panel and pressed a button. The machine gurgled and dribbled some liquid into the cups. “Look at that Twilight, proper dark coffee. Do you like coffee? I love it, but it does make me sorta super-extra-coco-loco. Now the next step is to steam the milk. Trick is to use a jug of nice cold milk and...” She positioned a jug underneath a small metal pipe sticking out of the panel and pressed another button. Immediately there was a loud hissing sound and a cloud of white foam erupted from the jug. Not unlike what happens with Spike if I don't watch how much bubble bath he uses.
“Okay,” continued Pinkie, wiping off her milk foam beard with a hoof. “Now pour the milk over the coffee, add sugar, sprinkle on some cocoa, and voilà!”
She placed the cup of frothy coffee in front of me, then sat down on the floor and slurped up her own. She gave a happy smile, running her tongue around her mouth, then jumped up and bounced around the room in a crazy fashion, rebounding from the walls and ceiling, while singing a song to a familiar tune:
“All you have to do to make nuclear power,
Is a U-2-3-5 mix,
Now take a reactor and a cooling tower,
Add some neutrons, just a pinch,
Running this plant, it's such a cinch,
Raise the rods, let's start the mission,
Lift a little more - don't overheat the core,
And you'll have nuclear fission!
Fission! Safe, clean and easy!
Fission! Don't feel uneasy!
Fission! fission, fission, FISSION!”
She had been right about the coffee.
My eyes switched between the control panel and Pinkie Pie. Here I was, two storeys underground, in a small, enclosed, hermetically sealed space, with enough radioactive material to kill every pony in Ponyville, a nuclear reactor about to overheat, and the responsible engineer was the bright pink Element of Laughter on a sugar and caffeine high. I couldn't take any more.
“PINKIE!” I screamed.
Pinkie fell silent. She walked over to sit in front of me and put a hoof to my face.
“What's up Twilight?” she asked calmly.
“Don't you see how dangerous this all is!” I shouted. “If something goes wrong it could destroy all Ponyville.”
Pinkie looked me in the eye. She paused before saying solemnly, “Twilight. It's safe. I promise.”
“You promise?”
“Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.”
She looked at me with a deadly serious stare.
“How can you be so sure?” I asked.
She smiled. “Because there's loads and loads of security features, and an auto-shutdown safety system, and a backup system to back up the auto-shutdown system, and a backup backup system to back up the backup system, and a backup backup backup system... And it's designed to be super stable so it won't overheat. And if anything goes wrong we drop the control rods right down. Or failing that we can squirt a neutron absorber into the water. Then there are four independent cooling systems... It's built to be totally idiot-proof!”
“But how can you be sure it will all work as designed?”
“Earth ponies have been running these plants for many years,” she said. “Without any accidents...” She paused a moment and stopped grinning. “Well, with very few accidents... There was that occasion when some streamers got stuck in the fan on the secondary cooling circuit, but nopony has hurt and there was hardly any release of radioactive gas... And there was that case in Fillydelphia when that colt blocked the safety valve with bubble gum... And that one unfortunate incident in Vanhoover – that was a stupid reactor design – rock candy does not make a good neutron moderator. But relatively speaking, it's totally-ultra-super-mega-safe.”
“But there's still a risk,” I said.
“There's always a small risk,” said Pinkie. “But it's no bigger than the everyday risks we all face due to things like cupcake poisoning, traffic accidents, and attack by timberwolves, changelings and giant crabs.”
This did not reassure me. “Thanks Pinkie. It's reassuring to know I am more likely to be eaten by a giant crab than killed in a nuclear incident.”
“You're welcome.”
With a cheerful smile Pinkie looked up at the control panel. “Temperature and pressure is stable. All cooling circuits running fine. Now delivering hot water and electricity to all Ponyville.” She picked up her clipboard. “Just one thing left on the list.”
“What's that?” I asked.
“PARTY!”
Stats
Page generated in 0.026 seconds
Total duration
946 users online
126,445 hits today, 2,314,256 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
When someone who is running a nuclear reactor says, "I think it's this button," I would run. I would run so very far away.
More likely to be eaten by a giant crab than die in a nuclear explosion...
Anywhere else, that would be very reassuring. Unfortunately, this is Ponyville. Those things are weekly occurrences.
So, the Cake's order of responsibility is Nuclear Engineer, Baker, and then Foalsitter. Well... um...
Oh, right. I'm just going to have to accept this and move on.
Hmm, she has a point about nuclear reactors going wrong... and the stairs. But don't let Sombra hear her say that about stairs!
Good touch with the things about light! Though you might want to explain that a bit more, because those who aren't aware are gonna see you casually mention something going faster than light.
I would've liked to hear more about Twilight's thoughts on the matter. After all, in the first chapter she regarded nuclear fission and fusion as 'dark magic' so hearing the whole thing about 'two hundred thousand years' might've gotten a reaction from her. *keeps reading* Ah, there's the reaction.
You write Engineer-Pinkie really well! Sudden insights coupled with, well, herself.
Giant crabs? Hmm, you don't happen to be referencing The Time Machine, would you?
wow, you realy know what your talking about, and is this a roundabout way of getting nuclear power further implimented? if so, good show! very good!!!!
My god.
The fact that you managed to dumb down the mechanics of a nuclear reactor and make it WORK..
That's commendable.
What, do you help run one in real life?
~Skeeter The Lurker
3672340
I'm fairly sure Rarity has a sparring session with one twice a week, to stay in shape.
I'm betting Rainbow was the prime culprit of that one. Trying to use them as training obstacles or something.
C'mon, Twi. Just remember, it's all For Science!
And this is why people hate calling tech support.
Spaceballs: The Coffee Maker!
I have to inquire if perhaps a friendly Discord couldn't do something better with it. Like turn it non-radioactive, or eat it, or something.
... It's been nice knowing you, Twi.
I'm going home and digging a bomb shelter in my backyard.
3672420
The musical number was especially impressive, wouldn't you say?
3672470
Haha, yeah, agreed!
~Skeeter The Lurker
Mr. Coffee?
~ Michael
I wonder how long it's going to take for the seed of hysteria to fully bloom in Twilight and for her to ruin everything.
"Twilight! What are doing?! You just destroyed the core!"
"It had to be done, Pinkie! It was too dangerous!"
"... Not anymore dangerous than a deranged alicorn prone to mental break downs and overreactions..."
You don't need to be brilliant to understand the basics of how nuclear energy works. Yet so many of us don't understand, and so become fearful of something that is amazing and could -actually- solve our power issues in the future, not some weak "we need to sacrifice our modern lifestyle to make it work" crap (I assure you our leaders and the truly wealthy will sacrifice nothing, only us).
There are better ways to do it than the traditional reactors and fuels used that were primarily designed to create cold war bomb material!
Author I love you for writing this story. It's fun and educational and might even help make the future a better place.
Hmmm.... So Equestria hasn't had a Three Mile Island yet. Good to know.
3672557
Less dangerous. I still want to know what the fuck Celestia was thinking giving supreme political and magical power to someone as unbalanced as Twilight Sparkle. Who has had major freak outs at LEAST four times since moving to ponyville.
3672624
They did have a Chernobyl, though.
Or "How I learned to stop worrying and love nuclear power."
But seriously, although Pinkie's bit at the end is a little heavy handed in it's delivery of "Nuclear power plants are not really that much more dangerous than anything else," well, some anvils need to be dropped. As someone who is a BIG supporter of nuclear power as a primary energy source, I am totally behind this.
The fact that these physics in Equestria stories are infinity entertaining certainly helps.
Also:
And soon, with the proceeds the gain from the cookie mines, they will be able to afford shipments from the cookie planet, and maybe one day will get a machine that turns gold into cookies.
3672653
She didn't give Twilight her magical power, at all. Twilight was born with it. Celestia is why Twilight can control it, without her mentorship, Twilight would be FAR more dangerous.
Pinkie as nuclear engineer?
Headcanon accepted.
Wow... I think I actually learned something from reading this!
Anyway, how long before Twilight snaps and turns into an unwilling terrorist?
3672441
as a note to you
ACME is to companies as 500 is to phone numbers they are both used as names for them because they will never exist and will allways be safe to use without trademark or copyright infringement.
3672819
I think you mean 555 numbers. There's an interesting reason why they use those in movies and TV shows.
Basically, the entire 555 exchange used to be reserved for directory assistance but they never found a need for more than one per area code so, no matter what area code you used, so you knew that the only valid number was 555-1212. In the '90s, they decided it was too big a waste and start looking for uses for them but they still needed something movies could use so people wouldn't actually try dialing real numbers so they made 555-0001 through 555-0199 officially reserved for use in movies.
There's also an interesting reason ACME is used so generically.
(When alphabetized Yellow Pages were first invented, companies valued being at the front of the list for their category very highly... so they wanted a name that meant something good (like peak/zenith/prime) and was as close to the beginning of the alphabet as possible... hence why there were a flood of companies named ACME in the 1920s and you could get ACME-branded anything.)
I remember how surprised I was when I saw a reactor core and it glowed blue. I felt so cheated, cartoons promised me a green glow!
I'm now scared of what would happen should Pinkie Pie discover antimatter. With fission and even fusion only a small fraction of the atomic mass is turned to pure energy usually in the form of heat whereas with antimatter 100% of the atomic mass is turned to pure energy usually in the form of heat too. Big energy output differential there.
Now where are the particle accelerators located again?
3672875
wow I was so wrong on both of those......
3673001
Don't feel bad. I'm a trivia sponge and even I only learned about ACME by chance.
PWRs are ok, as long as nothing goes wrong. Then you have the severe problem that they cant handle having only passive air and radiative cooling which by definition is the only safe stable design possible.
The thing that really confuses me is the nuclear waste. Its throwing out hundreds of megawats of thermal energy and needs cooling? How about putting a generator on it and reduce teh exhaust cooling load somewhat and get some extremely long durationa nd reliable power out? Say, 400 Mega watts for a couple hundred years with no moving parts and nothing to melt when things break except when metal thieves come along and steal teh shielding and doors because the goverment was cheap as usual and decided being dangerous was security enough?
Dont forget that those Cobalt medical cores are effectively low power compact nuclear power sources if not supercritical style, and people like playing with the pretty green(?) glowing things.
Hmm, must be different between water, air, and eyes.
Extra Hot coffee anyone?
3673098 New nuclear-powered coffee makers, from
VaultStableTec?it is kinda sad that I somehow learned more about nuclear physics from this then I did from my high-school classes?
I lost it when Pinkie started singing.
As in actually laughed out loud.
I think I woke up my sleeping dog.
Fission fission FISSION!!
In all seriousness, what folks who talk about the minimal risks of nuclear reactors never bother mentioning is the sheer *scale* of the disaster if something does go wrong. Maybe the over-all chances of being caught in a nuclear meltdown aren't any higher than being hit by a car, but at least being hit by a car is a very localized event.
There's also the fact that the vast majority of major nuclear power plants use decades-old designs, and many of them are located uncomfortably close to earthquake fault lines. Say what you will about "greener" power, at least you'll never see a headline about a massive leak from the wind farm or the solar plant.
3673222
Did you know that the latest versions of concentrated solar with energy storage can be tied into fast breeder reactors due to teh molten salt they use, where the fast breeder uses only the molten sodium?
It doesnt matter what the source of the heat is, currently all thermal plants use heat exchangers and turbo generators, making it a matter of cost, efficincy, complexity as to what you can get away with.
If you really want fun, you can take one of those giant third stage double expansion turbines, and plum the intake into a solar distiliation greenhouse thats big enough, and generate power that way. Sort of a land based OTEC unit. You only get about 7% of the excess power, or 4% of fuel improvement equivalent, but thats 4% baseload you dont have to pay for, then trade efficincy for power capacity during peak.
Im still waiting to see if its possible to use Schotky diode direct radiation energy converters in place of cooling heatsinks given the latest research lab have made one that works at optical frequencies, and most thermal exhaust is at far infrared, high microwave frequencies, where rectanna efficincies are up to 90%.
Just had a horrifying thought...
Cutie Mark Crusader Nuclear Engineers!
Wow this is great, love the song.
I've heard of this effect of radiation travelling through a substance faster than light can causing a Photonic Boom, but I didn't know it could happen with nuclear reactors.
Fun fact, 70-90% of nuclear reactor waste can be reused.
3673418
Congratulations, you just scared the ever living heck out of me
3673552
What the story tells is true. The blue light you see is truly the effect of faster-then-light-travel (in water): It is called “Cherenkov radiation”; see Wikipedia for details.
3672749
She was more or less directly responsible for Twilight getting a magical supercharge in the form of an ascension to Alicorn Status. If giving someone who has a past history of mental instability that much power isn't blatantly irresponsible, then I don't know what is.
3673935 Neat! I had heard that Astronauts had seen Photonic Shock Waves in space. This is caused by cosmic rays hitting their eyes and causing the release of this Cherenkov radiation as it passes through the fluid of the eye. Yep, a Photonic Boom inside your eye! Fun! This thing about glowing nuclear reactors was new to me though.
3674003
We don't actually know if her ascension had any notable effect on her magical ability. So far, she has shown no indication she is more powerful for it, at least in terms of unicorn magic. She can fly, so obviously she got some pegasus magic in the deal, no word yet on what, if any, earth pony magic got thrown her way.
As for mental instability, she isn't really any more nuts than most ponies, AND season 3 made a point of showing that she has gotten a pretty good handle on her insecurities. Which is why Celestia gave her the book when she did. Twilight, pre-char development, would have completely wigged out when the cutie-mark swap happened. Thing is, she got that character development, and kept a level enough head to solve the problem. And we have already seen plenty of times that she is a top notch leader when the chips are down.
3669595
...
no.
First of all, if an engineer built a bridge or reactor using the scientific method, we WOULD'T be seeing those work the first time around. See, scientific method is all about trying things to see what works and what doesn't- engineering is about figuring out what works, and doing it. If we tried the first... well, there's some good examples of why that's a bad idea all over the place.
Second, using science does not make you a scientist. Again, re-read the definition. That is the one I use. An engineer, of the type Pinkie appears to be from her actions and what we know of her already, is unlikely to qualify as a scientist because engineering is not about testing to aquire knowledge(there IS testing, small scale, but not of the same sort), but about doing. Usually.
3670795
Would you care to reread the second paragraph? I believe it will address the concern that you are bringing up here. As I said there, I was primarily responding to the assertion that her lab would be better than Twilights, and that such a lab would be unlikely to contain anything of even a slightly similiar nature, and that even if she DID do testing on a nuclear reactor, it is unlikely she would have the equipment separate from the reactor itself.
Also, most people who do testing involving reactors are physicists. Because... well, lots of things. There's stuff both of them do, but physicists tend to get more publicity and thus more of a budget for such things.(Seriously, Cern is pretty impressive and all, but damn, that's a hell of a budget, huh?)
Although, on retrospect, I suppose I did a bad job of presenting what I meant in previous comments. Regardless of the question of if an engineer should, generally speaking, be referred to as a scientist(I think perhaps some should, but the job in and of itself is not a subset of scientist, rather, the two have overlap), I do not believe Pinkie is a scientist, because it seems unlikely that she is in any field other than designing and building devices, and unless her helicopter-thingy was breaking entirely new ground(in which case, seriously, that'd make Pinkie an engineering genius), it seems likely that she designed it to function using math, pre-acquired knowledge, and engineering knowhow. I suppose, from what we've seen, one could argue her a scientist from the invention of her party canon, I've always seen Pinkie's devices as things she threw together from a combination of knowledge and Pinkie, working in a single attempt. She just doesn't seem organized enough to properly utilize the scientific method.
And again, her lab would still not be comparable to Twilight's because where Pinkie's would be focused entirely on fabrication(most likely), Twilight's would be focused on devices to gather more esoteric data than the sort Pinkie is focused on. (See, the device from Feeling Pinkie Keen, which... actually, has anyone tried to figure out what it did? it was supposed to be looking for some kind of activity, but the printout looked similar to that of a lie detector, and I don't understand how that would work. Hmm. TANGENT!)
That said, you had a quite marvelous example of an ad-hominem attack. Bravo. :P
3672340
to be fair, just because stuff like giant crabs attack on a regular basis, doesn't mean the likelyhood of being eaten is any higher...I mean, has anybody actually been hurt in any of these ridiculous occurrences?
3674515
Hmm...only the food poisoning one with Applejack's baked bads, actually.
Look at me still talking
when there's Science to do.
When I look out there, it makes me glad I'm not you.
...
...
...
I just got that of of my head. Thanks a lot.
3673552
Well, unless physics is wrong that cannot happen.
3674970
sorry its not working for me... how does STILL ALIVE work as a tune for Pinkie's reactor song?
3672605
Here I have to disagree with you. I learned about various types of nuclear reactors and understand how the whole process works pretty well. Let me explain you how nuclear energy is in fact not so great as you make it seem and why I think the 'green energy' is indeed a better option in the long term.
First off, you have to mine the uranium and enrich it make it usable. (Sadly, I don't know all the English terms for it) This wouldn't be a problem as such, but it still means it is a depletable resource like oil and we will run out of it eventually and sooner than we would like, considering how the world population grows exponentially.
Next point: The reactors themselves. I have to admit that while they are running, they are pretty efficient and clean. Accidents happen anyway. Chernobyl was a problem because they had a badly constructed reactor and human failure during an experiment, though the experiment itself had been something not too unusual. They simply messed up. Fukushima blew up because of the tsunami, a natural catastrophe. My point with this is, no matter how safe the technology in theory is, there is always room for an error. In addition, there is quite a number of nuclear power plants under construction right now and the more reactors there are, the more potential accidents can happen.
I mean, we have had two catastrophes in the past 30 years and we will have to deal with their aftereffects for at least 200.000 years. So if I say we have a fatal accident every 30-50 years, we as humanity will still run out of space rather soon. Not to mention how every incident poisons a big part of the globe with radiation.
And now lets get to the burnt-out uranium rods. Before you can do ANYTHING with them, they still have to be cooled down in a water bath for FIVE YEARS! After that, you still have to store them somewhere far away where no one has a problem with it. so where would that be? In the ocean rifts 2.000 kilometers under the sea where it poisons the fish we eat? In an old mine where it poisons the ground water of the area?
There is still no real solution to these problems and even if we may not have to deal with the full consequences of them, our next generations will have to. Are you really willing to do that to them?
The green energy on the other side has a practically unlimited supply, since the sun and wind and the tides will be there for a pretty long time, and if its not, the planet isn't habitable anymore anyway. The technology IS pretty underdeveloped at the time, but its far less dangerous and in the worst case, we have to rebuild a dam or something but it would just be a problem the next 5-10 years at its worst. And there is no toxic waste either.
I hope I made clear why I strongly oppose nuclear energy. Not because I know too little about it, but because I know enough to fear for the future.
I do like that the Cakes trusted Pinkie with a nuclear plant before they would let her bake cupcakes. I guess a baking cutie mark would skew their priorities.
This certainly answers the question of where Pinkie gets her party funds. Nice touch there.
Looking forward to more. Especially if most of Ponyville already knew Pinkie was running a fission plant.
3675603
Light travels at different speeds through different materials. Cherenkov radiation occurs when matter moves from one material to another and finds itself moving faster than light can in its new surroundings. It radiates energy as the laws of physics force it to decelerate.
3676073 Yeah, I forgot that, and also skipped the 'through different materials' part.
Love everything about this fic. It's terrifyingly plausible and in-character for everypony. The mechanics of nuclear power are well used, giving the story substance beyond expectations. And any soul who's ever had to mind newborn twins has to have smirked and nodded reflexively at the statement that it involves two full orders of magnitude more responsibility than operating a nuclear power plant.
3676070 Actually, there IS a far safer nuclear option. Thorium. It's fairly abundant in nature, will stop fission by default--making it less likely for any sort of catastrophic meltdown to ever occur--it'd be far more difficult to gather weapons-grade materials from a thorium reactor, and each reactor could be used to start a new one in a cycle that could go on for foreseeable centuries, infinitely offsetting the initial cost of the fuel.
Some research is still needed to implement it in more than small-scale use, but it's a very viable and insanely safe by comparison fuel that really deserves far more attention than it's been getting--though the same could be said for truly green energy as well.
3675716
Not the tune, but the concept. Science in a lab, deep underground, with the administrator clearly crazy? Sounds like Portal to me... Maybe I play too much portal...
3676192
I have looked into the article you linked to me and read a bit further into others as well and it brings to the conclusion that, while the Thorium Reactors are much safer than conventional reactors, the still have some major flaws. The most critical is that it is more theory than practice. Nuclear fusion would be just as viable, and it is still an open question if it would actually work the way we would like it to. It is a technology that might work, but could also simply be not viable. And even if it is viable, we still have nuclear waste. Much less the with uranium, but still some.
While with solar and wind power, as well as hydrogen for fuel cells we have no waste whatsoever, except when the power plant is built. I have to admit that they only produce energy irregularly, but we do need a better way to store energy anyway.
I agree that Thorium reactors should not be overlooked, but they are not the final solution either and need a LOT of development and research. For its present state though, nuclear energy is pretty much stupid, in my opinion.