Word: fissionability
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...running out of fossil fuels, and problems with fission prevent us from using that," he said...
...first Hanford reactor was built in 1943, amid the remote sand and sagebrush near the juncture of the Snake and Columbia rivers, to provide plutonium for the bomb destined to destroy Nagasaki. The N reactor (its predecessors have all gone to their last great fission in the sky) dates back 23 years -- and was designed to last only 20. The parts are worn, the pumps and wiring often fail, the whole reactor conks out 20 to 25 times a year. The graphite casing that holds the nuclear rods is swelling by nearly an inch a year, and will collide with...
Still, the Soviets announced that they have shut down and are modifying about half of the country's 14 RBMK-1000 Chernobyl-type reactors. Legasov said the overhaul will include the addition of more control rods to slow down nuclear fission in the water-cooled reactor core. Operators will have only limited ability to withdraw the rods, and a safer blend of uranium fuel is being developed...
...Like the Chernobyl facility, the Windscale Pile No. 1 plutonium-production plant north of Liverpool, England, used graphite to slow down neutrons emitted during nuclear fission. When workers discovered a fire in the reactor, they sprayed it with carbon dioxide but failed to quench the blaze. By the time the fire was put out with water, radioactive material had contaminated 200 sq. mi. of countryside. Officials banned the sale of milk from cows grazing in the area for more than a month. The government estimated that at least 33 cancer deaths could be traced to the effects of the accident...
...roughly 93% purity can be used in a Hiroshima-size bomb. Reprocessing is the chemical procedure for extracting Pu-239 from the spent uranium fuel of nuclear reactors, where the plutonium is produced as a waste product. A breeder reactor uses plutonium as fuel rather than uranium: by atomic fission, additional uranium placed in the breeder is converted into more plutonium than was consumed in the original reaction...