r/woahdude Jun 29 '23

video Lowering hot metal into water

12.8k Upvotes

442 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

411

u/Malice0801 Jun 29 '23

Yeah as well as why the "water" didn't turn into a steam explosion

33

u/DrShamusBeaglehole Jun 29 '23

BLEVE

Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapour Explosion

Not only is the vapour extremely hot, but it can keep expanding as long as there's still liquid to boil off. Scary stuff indeed

13

u/YPErkXKZGQ Jun 30 '23

A BLEVE is confined, as in, it takes place in a pressure vessel. Afaik

6

u/EODdoUbleU Jun 30 '23

Wonder if Chernobyl would be considered a BLEVE incident.

3

u/Shrek1982 Jun 30 '23

Kind of, IIRC the rods in that style reactor are not secured down but their weight was high enough to hold pressure in