Word: reactor
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...scientists-weak points in atomic technology, and so have spurred revisions in nuclear policies. Late last year, for example, the AEC issued new regulations to answer doubts concerning a crucial back-up safety device. Called the "emergency core cooling system" (ECCS), it is supposed to bathe the intensely hot reactor core with cooling water, thus preventing it from melting and releasing its radioactivity, if the primary cooling system fails. In 1972 an antinuclear coalition that calls itself the National Intervenors revealed in hearings that some experts, including AEC specialists, were unsure that the safety system would really work. Their complaints...
...reliability of nuclear plants. AEC Chairman Dixy Lee Ray cites the same figure to show how tough regulatory practices are. Both have some justification. Nuclear plants have had more than their share of operating mishaps, ranging from breaks in steam pipes to discoveries of defective welding and corrosion of reactor parts. But all the troubles were caught and fixed in time to prevent any accident involving radioactivity...
...widely used to prepare Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, cosmetics and paint. Five years ago he set out to design a more advanced machine, which would have enough force to rip apart single-cell organisms, releasing their protein to provide a cheap and plentiful food supplement. He built the Cottell Ultrasonic Reactor, which is hardly larger than a long loaf of bread and resembles an electric drill. The reactor is a mechanical torture chamber in which liquids and semiliquids are broken down under pressures of 1 million lbs. per sq. in. This force is built up by a titanium piston that plunges...
Surprise Bonus. On the long-accepted principle that minute particles of water improve combustion. Cottell began experimenting with mixtures of oil and watter. He broke them down in his reactor, and the tiny droplets of oil absorbed and encapsulated much tinier droplets of water. The emulsion burned so cleanly in his home furnace that, after months of testing, the fire had even oxidized away caked-on soot from the inner surfaces of the pipes. As a surprise bonus, says Cottell, the old furnace's fuel consumption fell...
...does this phenomenon work? Nobody is fully certain, but Cottell knows that when the emulsion prepared in his reactor is pumped into a furnace, the water droplets explode into superheated steam, shattering the oil droplets and exposing a maximum of the oils surface. This provides quick, nearly complete burning...