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A schematic nuclear fission chain reaction. 1. A uranium-235 atom absorbs a neutron and fissions into two new atoms (fission fragments), releasing three new neutrons and some binding energy. 2. One of those neutrons is absorbed by an atom of uranium-238 and does not continue the reaction. Another neutron is simply lost and does not collide with ...
Photofission is a process in which a nucleus, after absorbing a gamma ray, undergoes nuclear fission and splits into two or more fragments.. The reaction was discovered in 1940 by a small team of engineers and scientists operating the Westinghouse Atom Smasher at the company's Research Laboratories in Forest Hills, Pennsylvania. [1]
The neutrons needed for sustaining the fission process would be provided by a particle accelerator producing neutrons by spallation or photo-neutron production. These neutrons activate the thorium, enabling fission without needing to make the reactor critical. One benefit of such reactors is the relatively short half-lives of their waste products.
When nuclear fission occurs inside of a nuclear reactor, neutrons are produced. [1] These neutrons then, to state it simply, either react with the fuel in the reactor or escape from the reactor. [1] These two processes are referred to as neutron absorption and neutron leakage, and their sum is the neutron loss. [1]
Schematic of a nuclear fission chain reaction, here with a multiplication factor of 2. In the large-scale experiment B 8, a nuclear fission chain reaction was to be induced and observed by bombarding uranium with neutrons. The Haigerloch experiments were basic research.
Red: uranium-238, light green: plutonium-239, black: fission products. Intensity of blue color between the tiles indicates neutron density. A traveling-wave reactor (TWR) is a proposed type of nuclear fission reactor that can convert fertile material into usable fuel through nuclear transmutation, in tandem
In nuclear engineering, the void coefficient (more properly called void coefficient of reactivity) is a number that can be used to estimate how much the reactivity of a nuclear reactor changes as voids (typically steam bubbles) form in the reactor moderator or coolant. Net reactivity in a reactor depends on several factors, one of which is the ...
Photodisintegration (also called phototransmutation, or a photonuclear reaction) is a nuclear process in which an atomic nucleus absorbs a high-energy gamma ray, enters an excited state, and immediately decays by emitting a subatomic particle.