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Critical fission reactors are the most common type of nuclear reactor. In a critical fission reactor, neutrons produced by fission of fuel atoms are used to induce yet more fissions, to sustain a controllable amount of energy release. Devices that produce engineered but non-self-sustaining fission reactions are subcritical fission reactors.
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.
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.
The fuel for energy purposes, such as in a nuclear fission reactor, is very different, usually consisting of a low-enriched oxide material (e.g. uranium dioxide, UO 2). There are two primary isotopes used for fission reactions inside of nuclear reactors. The first and most common is uranium-235.
The BN-350 fast-neutron reactor at Aktau, Kazakhstan.It operated between 1973 and 1994. A fast-neutron reactor (FNR) or fast-spectrum reactor or simply a fast reactor is a category of nuclear reactor in which the fission chain reaction is sustained by fast neutrons (carrying energies above 1 MeV, on average), as opposed to slow thermal neutrons used in thermal-neutron reactors.
It is the world's first nuclear molten-salt reactor after the Oak Ridge project. The 100 MW successor was expected to be 3 meters tall and 2.5 meters wide, [64] capable of providing energy to 100,000 homes. [65] Further work on commercial reactors was announced with the target completion date of 2030. [66]
But fission reactors also produce thousands of tons of radioactive waste each year. "Fusion, on the other hand, is quite different and is not yet commercially available.
The first light bulbs ever lit by electricity generated by nuclear power at EBR-1 at Argonne National Laboratory-West, December 20, 1951. [7]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.