Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
RBMK reactors were designed to allow fuel rods to be changed at full power without shutting down, as in the pressurized heavy water CANDU reactor, both for refueling and for plutonium production for nuclear weapons. This required large cranes above the core.
RBMK is a Soviet-designed nuclear reactor that uses enriched uranium as its fuel. It is a rather unusual design as it uses graphite as its moderator, and was designed for plutonium production—but was also used extensively for electrical generation.
RBMK reactors, like those at Chernobyl, use water as a coolant, circulated by electrically driven pumps. [16] [17] Reactor No. 4 had 1,661 individual fuel channels, requiring over 12 million US gallons per hour for the entire reactor.
On April 26, 1986, the Number Four RBMK reactor at the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl, Ukraine, went out of control during a test at low-power, leading to an explosion and fire that demolished the reactor building and released large amounts of radiation into the atmosphere.
The Soviet-designed RBMK (reaktor bolshoy moshchnosty kanalny, high-power channel reactor) is a water-cooled reactor with individual fuel channels and using graphite as its moderator. It is also known as the light water graphite reactor (LWGR).
This began with the design of the RBMK (reaktor bolshoy moshchnosti kanalnyy, or “high-power channel-type reactor”), where natural uranium was chosen to avoid the cost of 235 U enrichment.
The four Chernobyl reactors were pressurized water reactors of the Soviet RBMK design, or Reactor BolshoMoshchnosty Kanalny, meaning “high-power channel reactor.”
The RBMK reactor is graphite-moderated, so a core of solid graphite is responsible for slowing down fast neutrons in the reactor core. In fact, the name RBMK is a Russian acronym for "High-powered channel-type reactor".
Today 15 RBMK power reactors are produc-ing electricity in three States: 11 units in Russia, two in Ukraine, and two in Lithuania. The gross electric power rating of all but two RBMKs is 1000 MWe; the exceptions are the two units at Ignalina in Lithuania which are rated at 1300 MWe gross.
Reactor control systems are unforgiving to many potential system upsets, with a consequent potential difficulty of successful recovery. Faster and less stable nuclear chain reactions--and power increases--when cooling water is lost.