Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
The Chernobyl sarcophagus, built to contain the effects of the 1986 disaster. A nuclear reactor is a device used to initiate and control a fission nuclear chain reaction. Nuclear reactors are used at nuclear power plants for electricity generation and in nuclear marine propulsion. When a fissile nucleus like uranium-235 or plutonium-239 absorbs ...
e. Nuclear fission is a reaction in which the nucleus of an atom splits into two or more smaller nuclei. The fission process often produces gamma photons, and releases a very large amount of energy even by the energetic standards of radioactive decay. Nuclear fission was discovered by chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann and physicists Lise ...
High-temperature gas-cooled reactor. A high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) is a type of gas-cooled nuclear reactor which use uranium fuel and graphite moderation to produce very high reactor core output temperatures. [1] All existing HTGR reactors use helium coolant. The reactor core can be either a "prismatic block" (reminiscent of a ...
A pressurized water reactor (PWR) is a type of light-water nuclear reactor. PWRs constitute the large majority of the world's nuclear power plants (with notable exceptions being the UK, Japan and Canada). In a PWR, the primary coolant (water) is pumped under high pressure to the reactor core where it is heated by the energy released by the ...
Gaseous fission reactor. A gas core reactor, and the very closely related vapor core reactor, is a proposed kind of nuclear reactor in which the nuclear fuel would be in a gaseous state rather than liquid or solid. In this type of reactor, the only temperature-limiting materials would be the reactor walls, and with appropriate cooling of the ...
Nuclear fuel has the highest energy density of all practical fuel sources. The processes involved in mining, refining, purifying, using, and disposing of nuclear fuel are collectively known as the nuclear fuel cycle. Most nuclear fuels contain heavy fissile actinide elements that are capable of undergoing and sustaining nuclear fission.
A reactor consists of an assembly of nuclear fuel (a reactor core), usually surrounded by a neutron moderator such as regular water, heavy water, graphite, or zirconium hydride, and fitted with mechanisms such as control rods which control the rate of the reaction. The physics of nuclear fission has several quirks that affect the design and ...
A steam generator (aka nuclear steam raising plant ('NSRP')) is a heat exchanger used to convert water into steam from heat produced in a nuclear reactor core. They are used in pressurized water reactor between the primary and secondary coolant loops. It is also used in liquid metal cooled reactors (LMR), in PHWR, in GCR, etc.