this made me smile

[p.larner]

apparrently RBMK as in soviet reactor stands for Really Badly Made Kettle.

[jmelson]

apparrently RBMK as in soviet reactor stands for Really Badly Made Kettle.

Well, no it doesn't, but that is a pretty GOOD metaphor for the foregone catastrophe that the RBMK1000 really is.  It is only a miracle that one didn't blow up  sooner!
Jon

[coppercone2]

the europeans do have a obsession with high power kettles. tea needs to be made on the tap basically. we can live with 1kw in usa

. Making tea in europe in 50k years is going to look like the end of wrath of khan.

[tooki]

the europeans do have a obsession with high power kettles. tea needs to be made on the tap basically. we can live with 1kw in usa

. Making tea in europe in 50k years is going to look like the end of wrath of khan.

No, they don’t have any such obsession, and this being a technical forum, you should know better than to repeat such drivel.

Europeans use >2kW kettles because that’s what they sell at the store when they go to buy one.
Americans suffice themselves with ~1.5kW kettles because that’s what they sell at the store when they go to buy one.

The only people who put any thought into this whatsoever are a small percentage of the many Europeans who go to USA and happen to notice a difference, and of those, an even smaller percentage make a fuss to compensate for their personal anatomical deficiencies. Nobody else gives a damn.

[EPAIII]

If this switched from nuclear reactors to electric tea kettles for the household and the difference in power levels, then it seems simple. With 115V and a 15A circuit, which is the most common circuit in US homes, you get a maximum of 1725W or 1.725KW.

On the other hand, if you have 230V with 10A circuits, then the max power you can get is 2300W or 2.3KW. I have not visited Europe and could be wrong, but it is my impression that 230V, 10A circuits are fairly common there.

In both cases the tea kettle designers go for less than the max and you are left with 1.5KW and 2.0KW respectively. Frankly, I have a couple of electric coffee brewing devices and at least one that I use for iced tea and none of them even comes close to that power level. It just takes a bit longer to brew with them: the water gets just as hot.

About time for a cup of coffee now.

This weakness of using 115V, 15A circuits is why I installed 115V, 20A circuits when I wired my garage/shop. They are perfectly legal here, you just must use a larger gauge of wire and sockets rated for 20A instead of those for just 15A. Of course the electrical contractors prefer using cheaper wire and outlets and that explains the predominance of the 15A circuits here and probably of 10A circuits in Europe.

I have yet to run out of power in any corner of my shop, even when I connect multiple devices to one circuit. And for the heavier tools and shop AC I have 230V, 20A circuits.

[AVGresponding]

And here in the UK I have my 240V 13A system that allows me to have a 3kW kettle. I don't like to have to wait for my coffee in the morning

[coppercone2]

it seems to work better if you wait a while after waking up (need less)

[tooki]

If this switched from nuclear reactors to electric tea kettles for the household and the difference in power levels, then it seems simple. With 115V and a 15A circuit, which is the most common circuit in US homes, you get a maximum of 1725W or 1.725KW.

On the other hand, if you have 230V with 10A circuits, then the max power you can get is 2300W or 2.3KW. I have not visited Europe and could be wrong, but it is my impression that 230V, 10A circuits are fairly common there.

USA has been 120V for around 80 years now, and before that, 110V. It was never nominally 115V, as far as I know.

So, without derating, the maximum power from a US socket is actually 1800W nominally.

As for Europe, it’s actually really common to have 13 or 16A circuits. The Schuko and French sockets that are used throughout most of Europe are 16A sockets, so they have to have a 16A circuit behind them. But since many other European plug types (including standard variants of the Italian and Swiss plugs) max out at 10A, 10A is kinda the de-facto lowest common denominator.

Here in Switzerland, what’s very common in domestic installations is to have 10A sockets on 13A circuits. 16A sockets are common in commercial installations, on 16A or 20A (IIRC) circuits. I can check at work if needed. (What I really like about the Swiss socket system is that there are also 10A and 16A three-phase sockets, and they’re backward-compatible with single-phase plugs! So a 16A 3-phase socket can accept any combination of 1- or 3-phase, 10A or 16A plug without any adapters.)

[AVGresponding]

it seems to work better if you wait a while after waking up (need less)

I don't have the time; I'm on a tight schedule in the mornings, up at 5:30, make coffee, check emails, cold shower, drive to work.

[wraper]

apparrently RBMK as in soviet reactor stands for Really Badly Made Kettle.

Well, no it doesn't, but that is a pretty GOOD metaphor for the foregone catastrophe that the RBMK1000 really is.  It is only a miracle that one didn't blow up  sooner!
Jon

It's not a miracle. While it had its flaws that allowed catastrophe to happen, what cased the catastrophe was intentional testing in extreme modes while disabling safety measures, and the worst, cutting corners to do their experiments faster. Would never happen without human meddling with its operation. There are other older and newer RBMK1000 operating till this day. In fact oldest RBMK-1000 were shut down just a few years ago (Chernobyl reactor No.4 that exploded was finished in 1983).