Hyundai, Nuclear Power, Buddhist Temple

When we last met I was staring at a very strange toilet in a new hotel...  Now I am about 30 minutes from leaving this hotel so I will try to quickly describe some of the things that have happened since then.

The first thing I must attempt to illustrate is that this country is magnificently beautiful.  The mountains go on forever into the horizon or until they meet up with the ocean and and they are scattered with both the traditional and modern buildings. 

The Hyundai hotel is pretty nice; but I'll get back to that later.  The first thing on the agenda for Wednesday

 was a visit to "Hydunai Heavy industries."  Below you can see a photo that I took before we we're told that we were no longer allowed to take photos:

 

Also in right by the plant you can something else quite interesting:

Then food:

Next, we visited one of Korea's many Nuclear Power Stations.  After getting the low-down on everything we wanted to know about the power station, we got taken to a nuclear power plant simulation control room:

 

The design of the nuclear power plant uses a three stage system where the rods have a separate heating loop and a heat exchanger is used before transporting energy out of the containment facility.  After this there is another heat exchanger that uses ocean water as a heat sink.  This makes the design a little less efficient; however, it makes it a lot safer because everything can be really well contained -- especially in case of emergencies.

Now -- in America nuclear power stations are characterized by large cooling towers.  This is because they use evaporative cooling in order to achieve high enough cooling rates to produce energy.  The Korean engineers wanted to prove that raising the temperature of the sea water before re injection by a few degrees was NOT damaging to the wildlife and so they built this:

Which uses the discharge water for a fish farm -- and simultaneously proving that the discharge does not harm the fish.  (I'm not saying I agree with them -- there are a lot more variables in the mix than just the fish...  But that is what I saw.)  There are (will be) some photos of the fish on the Picasa Web Album.

Next, we once again spent a great deal of time bussing -- enough to thorogouly enjoy some more beautiful country side scenery.  Picasa has the full set but here's a prime example:

The next stop was another Buddhist temple.  This one is in the mountains and was quite serene (aside from all the tourists)  We also got a chance to meet some monks!  Someone (not me) has a photo of me with the monks, but I have yet to attempt the tracking down of the photo.  Instead, here is a good snapshot of the inner court and main temple:

And of within the main temple -- taken from outside of course (no photography is allowed from within.)

Now at these temples, one of the ways that they fundraise is by getting tourists to sign roof-tiles.  These are stone tiles that will (one day) be used to make repairs around the temple.  Our group (of 20 NSF/NRF EAPSI students) made the donation to sign one:

And next:  Korean BBQ.  It's super delicious -- it's very rare to get meat that tender and juicy.  Basically you grab some of the lettuce and add the cooked beef to it and sprinkle with other ingredients in a taco-like fashion, then roll it up and eat!

On the way back to the hotel we stopped by a convenience store to get some party snacks; and then had a little party in the hotel room.  Then we headed down to "Club Havana" (which was IN the hotel) and danced for a few hours.  Now here's the thing; the club was really really dead -- but when you're in a group of 20 people; you basically have a portable party that you can bring anywhere you want!  And the hotel DJ was actually pretty good!

For archival's sake I will post the next day in a separate post.  This one is long enough already!