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The first artificial nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1, used nuclear graphite as a moderator. Graphite-moderated reactors were involved in two of the best-known nuclear disasters: an untested graphite annealing process contributed to the Windscale fire (but the graphite itself did not catch fire), while a graphite fire during the Chernobyl ...
Nuclear graphite is any grade of graphite, usually synthetic graphite, manufactured for use as a moderator or reflector within a nuclear reactor.Graphite is an important material for the construction of both historical and modern nuclear reactors because of its extreme purity and ability to withstand extremely high temperatures.
Water (sometimes called "light water" in this context) is the most commonly used moderator (roughly 75% of the world's reactors). Solid graphite (20% of reactors) and heavy water (5% of reactors) are the main alternatives. [1] Beryllium has also been used in some experimental types, and hydrocarbons have been suggested as another possibility.
The X-10 Graphite Reactor was the world's second artificial nuclear reactor after Chicago Pile-1 and was the first reactor designed and built for continuous operation. [47] It consisted of a huge block, 24 feet (7.3 m) long on each side, of nuclear graphite cubes, weighing around 1,500 short tons (1,400 t), that acted as a moderator.
A gas-cooled reactor (GCR) is a nuclear reactor that uses graphite as a neutron moderator and a gas (carbon dioxide or helium in extant designs) as coolant. [1] Although there are many other types of reactor cooled by gas, the terms GCR and to a lesser extent gas cooled reactor are particularly used to refer to this type of reactor.
Magnox is a type of nuclear power / production reactor that was designed to run on natural uranium with graphite as the moderator and carbon dioxide gas as the heat exchange coolant. It belongs to the wider class of gas-cooled reactors.
The company wants to add 1 to 4 gigawatts of new U.S. nuclear generation capacity starting in the early 2030s, it said in a release. A typical U.S. nuclear plant has a capacity of about 1 gigawatt.
A high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) is a type of gas-cooled nuclear reactor which uses uranium fuel and graphite moderation to produce very high reactor core output temperatures. [1] All existing HTGR reactors use helium coolant. The reactor core can be either a "prismatic block" (reminiscent of a conventional reactor core) or a ...