Navy reactor shutdown hydrazine oxygen scavenging

Pedagogical contrast with commercial pre-boiler sparging. Navy uses hydrazine; commercial plants can't afford it and use steam sparge instead.

Once you shut down — when you come into port on a nuclear carrier or a nuclear sub and you shut down the reactor, you basically have to do something to take care of that, and they put nitrogen blankets over it. The Navy actually uses something called — H2N2? Anybody know the name of that? Some of you must know the name of this. Hydrazine. Hydrazine is a great antioxidant. You're into health and all the antioxidants — drinking blueberry juice and stuff — this would be even worse, because this would kill you. But it's a great antioxidant. It would kill bacteria big time — actually, I don't know if it would kill bacteria, you really need ozone to kill bacteria. The Navy puts hydrazine above there and any oxygen will react with the hydrazine. Hydrazine is too expensive — only the Navy can afford it. Commercially they basically steam sparge, and they watch their oxygen very closely, because if there's no oxygen, you can't have corrosion.