Word: boron
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...reactor's power center is its fuel core. Housed in a pressure-cooker-like reactor vessel, the core is filled with pellets of fissionable uranium packed in bundles of thin cylindrical zircaloy rods. Inserted into the core are still other rods, usually made of cadmium or boron, which absorb and retain neutrons given off by the uranium atoms-in effect, stopping the billiards and regulating the intensity of the reaction. To start the reactor, the control rods are raised to precisely calculated levels. The chain reaction begins, converting mass into energy and producing great quantities of heat...
...into almost any shape, are extremely strong and durable, and weigh far less than metals of comparable strength, a ready market was available when they first appeared in the 1960s. The aircraft industry began using new composites for helicopter blades, turbojet fans and many other components-first plastics containing boron fibers. Then manufacturers began turning to fibers made of carbon or graphite (another form of carbon), which were less expensive and more versatile than the boron variety...
...Boron, found next to carbon on the periodic chart of elements, has unusual binding qualities which could have new technological uses, Lipscomb said...
...names−YFG-50, Boron XT and the XRC−conjure up visions of supersonic test planes or supercharged racing cars. But the sobriquets belong to tennis racquets, crafted in strange shapes of exotic materials, and designed to bestow court greatness on weekend hackers. In search of a bigger "sweet spot," more power and control, manufacturers have imbedded boron fibers in an epoxy matrix, reinforced nylon throat pieces with quartz, turned to the builders of nuclear reactors for ultrasonic welding techniques and altered the spacing of strings. The physics laboratories at Princeton where Albert Einstein once worked have been used...
...cluttered office to congratulate him. He was inspired to do the work that led to his Nobel, he recalls, when as a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology, he heard his professor, Linus Pauling-who has since won the Nobel chemistry and peace prizes-explain how boron compounds were bound together chemically. Intrigued by what seemed an incomplete explanation, he used Pauling's own techniques to study the compounds further. He discovered that boranes, the complex chemicals that combine boron and hydrogen molecules, were, bonded differently from other chemicals. That discovery led to his finding that borane...