Word: reactor
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...fall, the thing that impressed them most was a cylindrical, tanklike object 55 ft. long. They sat in rows of chairs while short, slender Dr. Alvin M. Weinberg, the 44-year-old physicist who is the lab's director, told them what was inside the tank: an experimental reactor in which liquid fuel replaces the troublesome solid-fuel elements of conventional power reactors. "A very bold idea," conceded Professor Vasily S. Emelyanov, chief of the Russian group. Last week Dr. Weinberg cautiously told his laboratory mates that the reactor has now run long enough to be considered "a tenable...
Largely a brainchild of Dr. Weinberg, the reactor HRE-2 (for Homogeneous Reactor Experiment No. 2) is an attempt to avoid some of the worst disadvantages of solid-fuel reactors. Since solid uranium is quickly corroded at high temperature, it must be enclosed in a more resistant metal such as zirconium or stainless steel. As the uranium fissions, it generates gases that tend to burst the container. Other fission products absorb neutrons, and when too much of this "poison" has accumulated, it makes the nuclear reaction slow down or stop. At intervals, the fuel elements must be removed and their...
...high-pressure fuel, which is fiercely radioactive as it comes from the spherical cell and cannot be handled or even observed except by special, remotely controlled devices. By ingenuity and careful engineering, Dr. Weinberg's staff managed to tame this lethal brew. His report proudly announced that "the reactor cell has been sealed with the circulating pumps running uninterruptedly for 1,600 hours (67 days), a feat which begins to approach the longest uninterrupted runs of any power reactor...
...effort: the roiling Belgian Congo has no university graduates capable of running an independent state. Belgium tried, but too late. It sank $9,000,000 into the Congo's five-year-old University of Lovanium near Leopoldville, a glittering campus that even boasts Africa's first nuclear reactor. But this year Lovanium (370 students) will graduate only a dozen Africans, and the newer University of Elisabethville (260 students) will produce even fewer...