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Nuclear criticality safety is a field of nuclear engineering dedicated to the prevention of nuclear and radiation accidents resulting from an inadvertent, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. [1] Nuclear criticality safety is concerned with mitigating the consequences of a nuclear criticality accident.
Criticality accidents are divided into one of two categories: Process accidents, where controls in place to prevent any criticality are breached;; Reactor accidents, which occur due to operator errors or other unintended events (e.g., during maintenance or fuel loading) in locations intended to achieve or approach criticality, such as nuclear power plants, nuclear reactors, and nuclear ...
Specific areas of application include, but are not limited to, radiation protection and dosimetry, radiation shielding, radiography, medical physics, nuclear criticality safety, detector design and analysis, nuclear oil well logging, accelerator target design, fission and fusion reactor design, decontamination and decommissioning. The code ...
A clean-up crew working to remove radioactive contamination after the Three Mile Island accident. Nuclear safety is defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as "The achievement of proper operating conditions, prevention of accidents or mitigation of accident consequences, resulting in protection of workers, the public and the environment from undue radiation hazards".
An important concern in the nuclear safety field is the aging of nuclear reactors. Quality Assurance Technicians, weld inspectors and radiographers use ultrasonic waves to look for cracks and other defects in hot metal parts, in order to identify "microscale" defects that lead to big cracks. [14]
Managed by the Philippine Nuclear Research Institute (formerly Philippine Atomic Energy Commission). 1st criticality in August 1963, reactor conversion in March 1984, criticality after conversion in April 1988, shut down since 1988 for pool repairs, on extended shutdown at present.
In 1950, the nuclear power plant project was converted to a Naval Nuclear Propulsion project. [3] Several years later Knolls' work joined that of Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory , the Argonne National Laboratory , and others in developing the world's first nuclear-powered submarine , the USS Nautilus on January 21, 1954.
Nuclear reactors can be susceptible to prompt-criticality accidents if a large increase in reactivity (or k-effective) occurs, e.g., following failure of their control and safety systems. The rapid uncontrollable increase in reactor power in prompt-critical conditions is likely to irreparably damage the reactor and in extreme cases, may breach ...