Matter in the Dark

There is another cold evening of Canadian winter. It is getting Dark now. Most of us stay inside our warm houses and enjoy the family activities like watching tv, playing games and reading books. Everything is great until the total blackout suddenly happens. All the lights are gone. No more electricity is available, and the electric heaters also stop working. The house is getting colder and colder. Then, we start to wonder what is happening. Farther away, a steam pipe unexpectedly ruptured at our aging power station and forced it to shut down causing a provincewide power loss. This could be a result of a long-time Flow-Accelerated Corrosion that causes the pipe to thin unknowingly and eventually break. We at UNB Nuclear, have studied this type of corrosion in power stations for more than 10 years. And we know that this fictional event could be prevented by online corrosion monitoring and chemical treatment of the steam/water piping. The picture represents a water droplet inside a cross-sectional chemically treated test probe, which exhibits strong hydrophobicity (repelling the water). With a combination of lighting and angle, a view like a galaxy in the sky can be seen inside a perfectly round water droplet.