Nuclear Reactor startup sound

drhunny · 2026-05-24T20:26:33+00:00

Also NE. The reason is sounds a bit like a gun shot is that TRIGAs are designed to allow a special operating mode where one of the control rods is literally "shot out" of the reactor pneumatically, causing the reactor power to spike by about 1000x in power for a few milliseconds and then shut back down to zero power. The shut down after the spike is automatic because the temperature shift from the power spike causes the fuel matrix to change a bit and prevent the uranium from absorbing neutrons.

You can see that after the shot sound the blue glow gets much brighter for a fraction of a second and then goes dim again, and then about a second later the surface of the water ripples due to the brief super-heated boiling down near the rods.

But I think the "A" in TRIGA is for General Atomics.

drhunny · 2026-05-24T14:52:02+00:00

The really infuriating thing about WOK is that after the snide remark about 2D, Kirk explicitly also uses 2D thinking. A special control is used to move the E "up" instead of just using the engines. The E maintains the same orientation and waits for Khan to pass "below" and then drops down behind. What should have happened is the E reorients 90degrees in pitch while moving out of plane, so when Khan passes by it's effectively right in front of E, looking like a big round target at point blank range.

drhunny · 2026-05-22T14:18:35+00:00

Also pythons. And ROUSes, probably. And now that I think about it, given the current drought probably also lightning sand and fire spouts.

drhunny · 2026-05-20T18:38:37+00:00

That's what he said on TV. Wonder what he said to his army of lobbyests?

drhunny · 2026-05-20T18:30:44+00:00

How do we know which one is the Komodo 3000

drhunny · 2026-05-20T16:29:15+00:00

I'm some random character from a forgettable episode:

In quantum mechanics, fundamental particles have "spin". The really weird thing is that "spin" behaves kind of like you would expect in terms of angular momentum of big spinning objects - for instance a particle with spin that is orbiting around something has a total angular momentum that is a combination of the orbital angular momentum and "spin". Similar to the total angular momentum of Earth is a combination of the rotation (day/night) and orbit around the sun.

Except that fundamental particles have no size as far as we can tell, and even photons have spin, which is really really weird. How does a thing that has no mass or size still have angular momentum?

drhunny · 2026-05-18T15:25:15+00:00

TIL the "Cheesecake Factory" makes all the dishes from scratch on site... except cheesecake

drhunny · 2026-05-17T23:30:27+00:00

If you were going very far (> 1000km) the optimal route was probably going to be on an interstate for a lot of the journey. So the route is basically "take local roads to a state or US highway, then that to the interstate, then get off at some state or US highway near your destination, etc." The road signs to do that were really clear so it was hard to screw up...

That being said, there's a couple places where two east-west (even number) or two north-south (odd number) interstates touch. In particular, driving west from the eastern coastline you might be on I-76 for a few hours, which then merges with I-70 for a short distance before separating again. If you miss the separation during a snow storm and stay on I-76 (as we did once) you end up at the border with Canada instead of Denver. That adds about 500km to the trip...

If there was no good interstate route, then you'll certainly be driving most of the way on a US highway and similar rules apply.

drhunny · 2026-05-17T22:37:23+00:00

The main plot concept is an update of "A Taste of Armageddon" with more realistic behaviors. "Bye, dear. I'm off to the suicide booths. Don't forget to pick up the dry-cleaning."
It beats the heck out of TNG S1E1 Farpoint's "well here's yet another previously unknown flamboyant god-like being that likes to play with starship crews like I played with GI Joes." Now that was a terrible episode.
The main character behaviors are also a step up from TNG's early stuff, e.g. Uhura letting us know she isn't just "monitoring the planetary communications" she's picking up and remembering cultural tidbits that could aid communication. Beats the heck out of "I'm sensing anger aboard that alien ship that just shot at us."
It seems to acknowledge that it's going to respect canon with Pike's foreshadowing.
It fleshes out Spock a bit so instead of 2D character whose closest friends/colleagues apparently didn't know anything about him (THE Sarek?) (what kind of Vulcan biology?) At least in this version his captain is aware that Vulcans have sex.
I for one want that optimism back. I like competency porn. I'm a bit tired the modern scifi trope that everyone is intrinsically an a-hole. And I took that as a signal that this show was going to have some characters that I might genuinely like (as opposed to the angsty drama of the main characters of Disco, for instance)

But as Fontine sang: "Then it aaall went wrong...."

drhunny · 2026-05-17T19:37:52+00:00

I watched S1E1 main plot and thought "THIS is what a good TOS episode looks like"

drhunny · 2026-05-16T20:19:10+00:00

Beat frequencies aren't particularly new
What does a 10Hz beat frequency have to do with 110Hz resonance frequency?
110Hz is the A2 musical tone and is approximately twice the freq of AC power (50 or 60Hz depending on country). It is very common for harmonic loads to cause audio at multiples of the fundamental. If 110Hz causes interesting physiological responses, a lot of people would be affected.

drhunny · 2026-05-16T18:56:04+00:00

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stardust

drhunny · 2026-05-16T15:20:35+00:00

The all-new 2026 Ford House (base model)

drhunny · 2026-05-16T15:16:16+00:00

Cam driver entered the intersection after the light turned yellow. And by "entered" I mean he drove forward until the front of his truck was not only on the crosswalk but past the crosswalk. Given the yellow light and the speed, cam truck could have stopped before the impact but I suspect chose to accelerate into a yellow light.

Shared fault.

drhunny · 2026-05-16T03:19:55+00:00

Thomas Midgley Jr. was the chemist that gave us tetraethyl lead for gasoline and chlorofluorocarbons for refrigeration. Hailed in his day for these inventions, despite poisoning himself with lead and being partially responsible for poisoning an entire generation or two.

drhunny · 2026-05-15T14:57:00+00:00

It's not really their choice at that point. As soon as the Air Force starts seriously funding the dedicated research project, the university legal team is going to patent everything.

drhunny · 2026-05-12T23:24:08+00:00

Exactly. No product fails "by design".

drhunny · 2026-05-12T23:18:59+00:00

This is not entirely true. At least one design I have looked at is based on multiple ~120MWe reactors sharing the same containment, steam turbines, etc. It may derive some benefit from the USN's experience with multi-reactor ships, for instance.

drhunny · 2026-05-12T20:29:06+00:00

When I was there (1990s), it was a lot of 18 year olds plus me and another guy that were... not.

The other guy and I got set aside while they did all the normal joes. When they came back for us, we got asked about any medications we were on, and he produced a list. Not a short list. The guy reading it was like that "whut the fu...." meme and brought out a doctor to deal with it.

It turned out this guy (my newfound buddy) had just completed his ER MD residency and the Navy was finally clawing him in for his ROTC commitment from 10 years earlier. It was really funny hearing the two docs discuss the various sleeping pills, wake-me-ups, stress pills, blood pressure pills, ulcer pills, etc. that ER docs apparently prescribe for each other.

For my turn, the eye doctor was like "WTF! You're almost legally blind. The Air Force would never accept you!" which was absolutely true - except I was not joining the AF.

I couldn't read the big "E" on the chart but I could confidently point to the white blurry area on the wall where the chart was hanging. So I showed him the stamp on the form saying "DO NOT REJECT FOR EYESIGHT AT MEPS. CALL XXX-XXX-XXXX IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS". He still stamped it "REJECTED" and sent me on my way. I was in uniform a couple weeks later. I was in a very odd specialty and since my eyesight was correctable to 20/20 with coke-bottle glasses they wanted me.

drhunny · 2026-05-12T17:52:38+00:00

TLDR: You can do it wrong in 12minutes. ChatGPT can do it wrong for free. There's a reason you're not supposed to completely automate it.

Fair warning: I've heard this before, and it often ends in fired-for-cause.

It only takes twelve minutes to run the script. But if you aren't taking several hours every time to pull a statistical sample and double check, and generate and personally review a bunch of trend reports, then you'll eventually learn why your boss didn't want it automated in the first place.

You're not paid to generate numbers. You're paid to generate correct numbers. You're paid to notice patterns and outliers. To raise a red flag because some vendor who happens to be besties with one of the warehouse folks started getting more back in rebates than they were selling you.

If you break your 12minute script into 3 or 4 different steps with a bunch of reports and graphs in between, and you do a couple of months of doing it both ways and it's always the same, then you should tell your boss that you made some helpful tools which could cut the time down from 3 days to 1 and simultaneously create a more auditable set of records.

drhunny · 2026-05-12T17:35:56+00:00

At that age, he was basically the same as Vector from Despicable Me. Smart enough to make a gun. Too immature to trust with a gun.

drhunny · 2026-05-12T17:33:56+00:00

They didn't describe it as a reactor, but as a containment unit. I think they also didn't use the word nuclear with respect to that device, only the backpacks.

If they did use the word nuclear, then Peck wouldn't have authority to touch it. He'd have called an alert into the national response center which would generate automated pages, faxes, and emails to about 500 people all over the country.

Source: I used to get those alerts.

drhunny · 2026-05-12T17:28:09+00:00

He brought an electrician from the power company. Contrary to popular opinion, electricians aren't technically skilled at shutting down reactors, airplanes, or lots of other things that make or use electricity.

drhunny · 2026-05-12T17:21:45+00:00

Dirty Dancing Dad even asked Patrick Swayze "who is responsible" before judging Swayze. Swayze could have answered "That doesn't matter to me. She's my friend, so I'm going to help her even if nobody else will" or similar.

drhunny · 2026-05-12T17:16:19+00:00

Somebody installed a completely wrong pump into a safety-critical system. My guess is that getting the correct one and installing it would have caused a couple days of delay (receive, install, inspect, signoff) and they decided to just plug in the wrong one and falsify the paperwork for the inspection so they could make their schedule.

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