Science Forums 2

[UncleAl]

But the plan requires the building of a new kind of nuclear reactor.
And it would heat that water to 800 degrees Celsius

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Quartz is hydrothermally grown at 300-400 C and 23,000 psi tops. The autoclave wall is a foot thick. The autoclave is loaded, sealed, warmed, and convection does the rest - no feedthroughs. Growing quartz has been refined over more than 50 years. The heavily armored autoclaves are ungodly expensive and still occasionally explode.

http://www.ndt.net/article/apcndt01/.../1160/1160.htm
Nasty boom boom problems even with tiny lab high pressure autoclaves.

You want to run 400+ C higher in temp, with feedthroughs and insulation for high amperage electricity and hydrogen handling at 800C? Look up hydrogen embrittlement.

http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/phase.html
Note temp in K not C!

Are you insane? The pressure could be no less than 10^11 Pa or 15 million psi. Yer gonna generate and handle thousands of metric tonnes of hydrogen at 15 million psi and 800 C? HA HA HA!!! Liquid water at 800 C eats everything. Nothing could contain the hydrogen. It would diffuse through solid steel. Steel at 800 C deforms under modest pressure. Nickel superalloys might survive it. Go price 1000 metric tonnes of fabricated Hastelloy C-2000. Does your calculator go that high?

How are you going to run insulated electrodes through the containment wall? Do you think a compression fitting or a cone fitting will hold at 15 million psi? What will you use as the electrical insulator? No organic survives even 400 C continuous. Ceramics under those conditions in water plus electolyte (Gonna use acid? Base? What salt whose anions will not preferentially undergo redox?) rapidly dissolve. But wait! There's more! What makes you think COPPER will stick around chemically or physically? It will flow like, well, water when 15 million psi is doing the pushing.

How do you plant to pump in more water at 15 million psi and 800 C as it is progressively consumed by electrolysis? Where will the oxygen go? Do you imagine pure oxygen will be corrosive to metal at 15 million psi and 800 C (bright red heat)?

The nuclear reactor specs are also doubtful, but why worry about that? /_\(PV) is energy, 101.325 J/liter-atm. Your electrolysis reactor would loose the energy of a mini-nuke if it breached.