Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Shutdown is the state of a nuclear reactor when the fission reaction is slowed significantly or halted completely. Different nuclear reactor designs have different definitions for what "shutdown" means, but it typically means that the reactor is not producing a measurable amount of electricity or heat and is in a stable condition with very low reactivity.
Emergency core cooling systems (ECCS) are designed to safely shut down a nuclear reactor during accident conditions. The ECCS allows the plant to respond to a variety of accident conditions (e.g. LOCAs) and additionally introduce redundancy so that the plant can be shut down even with one or more subsystem failures. In most plants, ECCS is ...
Nuclear reactors generally have automatic and manual systems to scram the reactor in an emergency shut down. These systems insert large amounts of poison (often boron in the form of boric acid ) into the reactor to shut the fission reaction down if unsafe conditions are detected or anticipated.
Reactors 1, 2, 5 and 6 are in cold shutdown, while Reactor No. 3 is shut down for repair and Reactor No. 4 is in so-called hot shutdown, according to the plant.
Passive nuclear safety is a design approach for safety features, implemented in a nuclear reactor, that does not require any active intervention on the part of the operator or electrical/electronic feedback in order to bring the reactor to a safe shutdown state, in the event of a particular type of emergency (usually overheating resulting from a loss of coolant or loss of coolant flow).
Nuclear fusion is normally understood to occur at temperatures in the tens of millions of degrees. This is called "thermonuclear fusion".Since the 1920s, there has been speculation that nuclear fusion might be possible at much lower temperatures by catalytically fusing hydrogen absorbed in a metal catalyst.
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".
Sand will fuse into glass if it is close enough to the nuclear fireball to be drawn into it, and is thus heated to the necessary temperatures to do so; this is known as trinitite. [39] At the explosion of nuclear bombs lightning discharges sometimes occur. [40] Smoke trails are often seen in photographs of nuclear explosions.