OT: Crematorium heat

[Matty F]

There's plenty of free depleted uranium. Take as much as you want. They'll probaly pay you to get rid of it.

[Chris J Dixon]

Indeed it is. Some low pressure turbine casings include a special explosion vent comprising a thin metal sheet normally sucked onto a mesh frame, with a sharp spike poised above it. If pressure becomes positive, the metal bulges and is pierced by the spike to vent to atmosphere. I remember working on the control relays which, as vacuum fell, opened the turbine hall roof vents, so that the expected blast didn't take all the windows out.

One of the problems that hasn't been mentioned is that unless you can guarantee that the heat you need to dump will be accepted

24/7, then you still have to provide conventional cooling.

You also need to deal with failures, maintenance and the ranking order that dictates when sets are required to be run. Either a fully rated alternative heat supply, or customers who also don't mind (possibly long) interruptions.

An advantage of district heat in places like Västerås (Sweden) is that the return pipe, although by now too cool to be of much use for heating, can help keep pavements free of snow. I recall being there as snow fell, and the melt pattern revealed the convoluted course of the heating pipes.

Chris

[The Natural Philosopher]

So, don't be so picky about insulation levels.

Its waste heat after all.

could just bed a standard pipe in vermiculite or similar.

[The Natural Philosopher]

works well with neighbourhood waste burners tho.

You could e.g. combine one with a supermarket..use waste to power the whole thing.

[The Natural Philosopher]

No, but it makes for very good UFH installations if designed for that BUT actually the tendency is to us in conjunction with less efficient turbine exhausting at maybe 70-80C.

[Mike Clarke]

Except that we're talking about _very_ large volumes of water - power station CW outlets are more like big tunnels than pipes. So large scale distribution of this lot for domestic heating would be problematic. Waste heat from power station condensers is only likely to be viable if you have a large demand immediately adjacent to the power station like acres of glasshouses and apparently these haven't been viable solutions.

[David in Normandy]

Is that why the nearby pikeys glow in the dark?

[Jules Richardson]

I suppose that's not too different to the setup we have here, with electric heat at stupidly low prices that isn't available 24x7, and propane-derived heat at normal market rates as a backup source to keep things going when the 'leccy heat isn't available.

That'd certainly be welcome here, too - at least so long as it was operating often enough to not simply turn everything into a giant ice rink.

cheers

Jules

[Skipweasel]

Don't joke - the Russians have misplaced quite a few radio-isotope thermal generators, and some have turned up in scrap yards.

Happened in South America somewhere, too. The core from a radiotherapy machine got inappropriately scrapped.

[Steve Firth]

It's happened far more than once.

I posted earlier this week, in another NG, "in South America lax dumping of medical equipment has been the cause of hundreds of contamination incidents and at least four deaths from acute radiation sickness. The isotopes involved had been widely dispersed as in an explosion in at least two incidents ( Ciudad Juárez, Mexico [Co-60] and Goiânia, Brasil [Cs-137])."

Plenty of other incidents around the world to choose from.

[Huge]

Hell, it's happened in *California*.

[Tim Streater]

No, it happened in South America or more likely Mexico. It was *noticed* in California or possibly New Mexico when a truck that had been used to transport some of the scrap then entered a US nuclear facility. It set the radioactivity alarms off when it then needed to leave.

Inspection showed that numbers of the fuel pellets from the scrapped kit were just rolling around loose in the back of the truck.

[Huge]

Of course. I stand corrected.

[Tim Lamb]

There is some good fishing off the Sizewell bank.

regards

>

[Skipweasel]

And then there's the Nuclear Boy Scout. q.v. Wikipedia article.

[John Rumm]

Last one I saw was a tad on the large size for the average hall (you might want to filter the real mail out first as well!)

[alexander.keys1]

You can use the ash from burning paper as a fertiliser, AFAIK it is high in potash, but don't put t into the soil until the plants are growing, as it will be soon leached away by rainfall. It needs to be kept dry until required for use.

[Andy Champ]

I think he means the waste piles. They have some short half life stuff.

Andy

[Matty F]

I'm in NZ where there's plenty of land. The letterbox is a separate structure down by the road, and a driveway wends its way through the trees to the large garage/workshop and the house. Some people prefer to drive from their hallway to their letterbox. I could do that but am not so lazy!

[John Rumm]

Prolly not a bad idea there then ;-)

A cousin of mine had one on a farm, to provide CH and DHW for a large farmhouse and a few outbuildings. It was quite handy since you could lob any old junk in there within reason.