Formerly /u/Zalack on Reddit.

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • A lot (all) nuclear accidents also occurred with older reactor designs.

    Traditional nuclear reactors were designed in such a way that they required management to keep the reaction from running away. The reaction itself was self-sustaining and therefore the had to be actively moderated to stay inside safe conditions. If something broke, or was mis-managed, the reaction had a chance of continuing to grow out of control. That’s called a melt-down.

    As an imperfect analogy, older reactors were water towers. The machinery is keeping the water in an unstable state, and a failure means it comes crashing down to earth

    Newer reactrs are designed so they they require active management to keep the reaction going. The reaction isn’t self-sustaining, and requires outside power to maintain. If something breaks or is mismanaged, the reaction stops and the whole thing shuts down. That means they can’t melt down.

    As an imperfect analogy, newer reactors are water pumps. If power is interrupted nothing breaks catastrophically, water just stops moving.


  • Theory in science generally means something much more stringent than it does in vernacular. From Wikipedia:

    A scientific theory is an explanation of an aspect of the natural world and universe that can be (or a fortiori, that has been) repeatedly tested and corroborated in accordance with the scientific method, using accepted protocols of observation, measurement, and evaluation of results. Where possible, theories are tested under controlled conditions in an experiment.[1][2] In circumstances not amenable to experimental testing, theories are evaluated through principles of abductive reasoning. Established scientific theories have withstood rigorous scrutiny and embody scientific knowledge.

    A scientific theory differs from a scientific fact or scientific law in that a theory explains “why” or “how”: a fact is a simple, basic observation, whereas a law is a statement (often a mathematical equation) about a relationship between facts and/or other laws.

    So when something is being put forward as “A Scientific Theory” it is meant to be taken as the best possible explanation we can make of why the universe is the way it is, backed by exhaustive tests using the best methods currently available to us.

    In science, when something is just a theory in the way you mean, it’s called a hypothesis.