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A fission fragment reactor is a nuclear reactor that generates electricity by decelerating an ion beam of fission byproducts instead of using nuclear reactions to generate heat. By doing so, it bypasses the Carnot cycle and can achieve efficiencies of up to 90% instead of 40–45% attainable by efficient turbine-driven thermal reactors.
English: Nuclear reactor: pressurized water type. Water is heated through the splitting of uranium atoms in the reactor core. The water, held under high pressure to keep it from boiling, produces steam by transferring heat to a secondary source of water. The steam is used to generate electricity.
1 Diagram of the Operation of a Nuclear Reactor in a Standard Nuclear Power Plant. Toggle the table of contents. Wikipedia: ...
Illustration of a light water small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) The small modular reactor (SMR) is a class of small nuclear fission reactor, designed to be built in a factory, shipped to operational sites for installation and then used to power buildings or other commercial operations.
Example of a molten-salt reactor scheme. A molten-salt reactor (MSR) is a class of nuclear fission reactor in which the primary nuclear reactor coolant and/or the fuel is a mixture of molten salt with a fissile material. Two research MSRs operated in the United States in the mid-20th century.
A pressurized water reactor (PWR) is a type of light-water nuclear reactor. PWRs constitute the large majority of the world's nuclear power plants (with notable exceptions being the UK, Japan, India and Canada).
Some reactor poisons are deliberately inserted into fission reactor cores to control the reaction; boron or cadmium control rods are the best example. Many reactor poisons are produced by the fission process itself, and buildup of neutron-absorbing fission products affects both the fuel economics and the controllability of nuclear reactors.
Modern nuclear reactor designs have had numerous safety improvements since the first-generation nuclear reactors. A nuclear power plant cannot explode like a nuclear weapon because the fuel for uranium reactors is not enriched enough, and nuclear weapons require precision explosives to force fuel into a small enough volume to become supercritical.