Boiling The boiling point of water is 100 °C or 212 °F but is lower with the decreased atmospheric pressure found at higher altitudes. Boiling water is used as a method of making it potable by killing microbes that may be present. The sensitivity of different micro-organisms to heat varies, but if water is held at 70 °C (158 °F) for ten minutes, many organisms are killed, but some are more resistant to heat and require one minute at the boiling point of water. Boiling is also used in cooking. Foods suitable for boiling include vegetables, starchy foods such as rice,
Boiling water reactor naval vessels (submarines, especially), as space was at a premium, and PWRs could be made compact and high-power enough to fit in such, in any event. But other researchers wanted to investigate whether the supposed instability caused by boiling water in a reactor core would really cause instability. During early reactor development, a small group of engineers accidentally increased the reactor power level on an experimental reactor to such an extent that the water quickly boiled, this shut down the reactor, indicating the useful self-moderating property in emergency circumstances. In particular, Samuel Untermyer II, a researcher at Argonne National Laboratory,