Can the steam generated by nuclear power plants be distilled and become a source of drinking water?

Question

I mean, distillation is when water is turned into steam and then condenses as pure water, so why not take advantage of a source of steam. Surely the water does not contain radiation.

Answer 1

If I understand the process correctly, the steam that is generated to spin the turbines to run the generators which generate electricity is condensed and recycled to be re-used.

Note that there is usually a double heat transfer cycle. The heat of the core where the fission takes place is transferred to a fluid, then that fluid transfers its heat to another fluid in a heat exchanger. Whatever radiation transfers from the core to the first working fluid stays in the first fluid, and extremely little gets into the second fluid. The second fluid is pure water, and it is converted to steam as it expands and spins the turbines, etc. That steam is condensed as it loses heat energy, then is returned to the heat exchanged to gain more heat energy and repeat the work of spinning the tubines.

Thus, if pure water is used in the first place, no corrosion takes place, and (except for long term metal fatigue due to repeated heating/ cooling cycles) the system experiences no wear and never has to be opened except to replace the turbines at periodic intervals. It is a closed system, and the steam/ water never escapes.

If the reactor were vastly overpowered for the turbines and generators it was running, and if it was bringing in water from an external source (the sea) then it would be possible to condense the steam for potable water. But cleaning up the mineral deposits left behind in the intake/ evaporation sysems would be a serious engineering challenge. And, distilled water, if you have ever tasted it, is so tasteless as to be unpleasant to drink. Sorry.

4 NOV 06, 0221 hrs, GMT.

Answer 2

Some, but not all, plants use cooling towers to cool the plant and those towers do sometimes steam, but I don't know any cheap way to condense that steam. The whole idea is that the evaporation making the steam removes heat from the plant. Condensing it would require removing the heat from the steam. If we could do that cheaply, then they would just use that method to cool the plant directly without bothering with the intermediate step of making steam.

Answer 3

No. warm radioactive water is undergone a steel "warmth exchanger". popular water on the different area of steel partitions consists of off the warmth. The radioactive water is recirculated lower back into the plant. The radiation passing by the steel isn't the main remarkable type to make the conventional water radioactive.