Hacker News Reader

Comment by tabtab | Hacker News Reader

What's the sun-shaped thing in photo #2?

I think it's a graphical representation of the RBMK control rods [1].

It's also in the last two images. These are replaceable control rods that were laid out in a circular pattern in the RBMK class reactors.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK

It's not nearly enough rods for an RBMK. Those were huge. And they had nothing outside the circle. Probably another type of nuclear facility. Maybe a medical isotope reactor?

The second last photo looks like an RBMK or at least something that size.

They had channel-type reactors before the RBMK (essentially earlier generations of the design) that were smaller. Could be what these are.

If you click on the picture it says it's the Kola nuclear power plant, which is a VVER-440 reactor. Searching for other VVER pictures, e.g.[1], confirms that they match.

[1] http://www.nucleartourist.com/areas/vver440a.htm

This one? https://www.atomic-energy.ru/news/2012/05/21/33562

That's Кольская АЭС, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Nuclear_Power_Plant

This is a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VVER

#2 links to atomic-energy.ru

So it's probably nuclear plant control console and I'm guessing nuclear fuel rods are represented by a dot inside the "sun" and rods themselves are suspended in some sort of a circular enclosure

There are a few pictures with this arrangement. My guess is these are nuclear reactor control rooms, and those representthe control rod arrays.

Status of nuclear control rods I imagine?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com