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SCRAM button at the Experimental Breeder Reactor I in Idaho. Sometimes the switch will have a flip cover to prevent inadvertent operation. A scram or SCRAM is an emergency shutdown of a nuclear reactor effected by immediately terminating the fission reaction.
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.
A reactor protection system (RPS) is a set of nuclear safety and security components in a nuclear power plant designed to safely shut down the reactor and prevent the release of radioactive materials. The system can "trip" automatically (initiating a scram), or it can be tripped by the operators. Trips occur when the parameters meet or exceed ...
If the reactor is at power or ascending to power (i.e. if the reactor is supercritical; the control rods are withdrawn to the point where the reactor generates more neutrons than it absorbs), there are safety-related contingencies that may arise that necessitate a rapid shutdown of the reactor, or, in Western nuclear parlance, a "SCRAM".
Certain aspects of the original RBMK reactor design had several shortcomings, [3] such as the large positive void coefficient, the 'positive scram effect' of the control rods [4] and instability at low power levels—which contributed to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, in which an RBMK experienced an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction, leading to ...
Boiling water reactors are able to SCRAM the reactor completely with the help of their control rods. [2] In the case of a loss of coolant accident (LOCA), the water-loss of the primary cooling system can be compensated with normal water pumped into the cooling circuit.
Move over, Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword—there's a new NYT word game in town! The New York Times' recent game, "Strands," is becoming more and more popular as another daily activity ...
Approximately three seconds after the initiation of the scram, the reactor underwent a power excursion, rising to 520 MW (thermal). As the control rods dropped into the core, the graphite displacers that made up the last few meters of the rods introduced additional moderation and hence reactivity into the reactor system.