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To reduce the concentration of Pu-240 in the plutonium produced, weapons program plutonium production reactors (e.g. B Reactor) irradiate the uranium for a far shorter time than is normal for a nuclear power reactor. More precisely, weapons-grade plutonium is obtained from uranium irradiated to a low burnup.
Plutonium-239 present in reactor fuel can absorb neutrons and fission just as uranium-235 can. Since plutonium-239 is constantly being created in the reactor core during operation, the use of plutonium-239 as nuclear fuel in power plants can occur without reprocessing of spent fuel; the plutonium-239 is fissioned in the same fuel rods in which ...
The first light bulbs ever lit by electricity generated by nuclear power at EBR-1 at Argonne National Laboratory-West, December 20, 1951. [7]The process of nuclear fission was discovered in 1938 after over four decades of work on the science of radioactivity and the elaboration of new nuclear physics that described the components of atoms.
Used nuclear fuel is a complex mixture of the fission products, uranium, plutonium, and the transplutonium metals. In fuel which has been used at high temperature in power reactors it is common for the fuel to be heterogeneous ; often the fuel will contain nanoparticles of platinum group metals such as palladium .
Reactor-grade plutonium (RGPu) [1] [2] is the isotopic grade of plutonium that is found in spent nuclear fuel after the uranium-235 primary fuel that a nuclear power reactor uses has burnt up. The uranium-238 from which most of the plutonium isotopes derive by neutron capture is found along with the U-235 in the low enriched uranium fuel of ...
During fission, a fraction of the nuclear binding energy, which holds a nucleus together, is released as a large amount of electromagnetic and kinetic energy (much of the latter being quickly converted to thermal energy). Fission of a kilogram of plutonium-239 can produce an explosion equivalent to 21,000 tons of TNT (88,000 GJ). It is this ...
Fission product yields by mass for thermal neutron fission of U-235 and Pu-239 (the two typical of current nuclear power reactors) and U-233 (used in the thorium cycle). This page discusses each of the main elements in the mixture of fission products produced by nuclear fission of the common nuclear fuels uranium and plutonium.
The two fissile materials used in nuclear weapons are: 235 U, also known as highly enriched uranium (HEU), "oralloy" meaning "Oak Ridge alloy", [12] or "25" (a combination of the last digit of the atomic number of uranium-235, which is 92, and the last digit of its mass number, which is 235); and 239 Pu, also known as plutonium-239, or "49 ...