Word: reactors
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...name of Godiva" says Los Alamos, deadpan, "has a logical basis." She is a "bare reactor" (no neutron reflectors), and she can assemble three or more pieces of fissionable material into a critical mass. Like Topsy, she will scram if a reaction gets out of hand...
Last December, Chalk River's nuclear reactor had to be shut down because of leakage of radioactive material. The aluminum jackets around several of its uranium "fuel" rods had corroded and permitted "hot" products of the nuclear reaction to escape into the heavy water surrounding the rods. Thus the whole reactor, including the big tank that held the heavy water, was contaminated. The reactor could not be rebuilt until the tank had been properly taken care cf. With an announcer barking orders over a public-address system, men in gas masks and protective clothing started the ticklish operation...
...will soon stop, leaving most of U-238 unaffected. But if the amount of plutonium produced is greater, the reaction will continue until all the U-238 has been turned into plutonium. The way to accomplish this scientific miracle (a fuel that breeds like rabbits) is to make a reactor that is extremely economical in neutrons. If more than one neutron from fissioning U-235 is available for turning U-238 into plutonium, the amount of fuel in the charge, instead of being consumed like coal, will grow continually...
This is what has been done at Arco under the direction of Dr. Walter Zinn of the Argonne National Laboratory. The AEC has given few details, but the reactor certainly used new structural materials (such as zirconium) which absorb very few neutrons, leaving enough to breed an excess of plutonium. It must have been running long enough to prove that it actually "breeds...
Energy Unlimited. Chairman Dean points out emphatically that the success of the breeder reactor is not the dawn of a new atomic millennium. Fuel supply is only one of the obstacles that stand in the way of atomic power at competitive prices. But the breeder eliminates any possibility that the world's supply of fissionable material will run out in the practical future. Under the system of burning only the U-235, each pound of natural uranium, containing .007 Ibs. of fissionable materials, was equivalent in energy to about 18,200 Ibs. of coal. The breeding system makes...