Questions tagged [nuclear-engineering]
36 questions
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How does thermonuclear warhead yield scale with size?
The Tsar Bomba packed a yield of 50 megatons into a package 2.1m in diameter by 8m long. Assuming that the lead tamper modification was not used (which boosts the yield of the Tsar Bomba design to 100 megatons), how much would the yield scale as a…
ThreePhaseEel
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Summary of major outage management works needed in the 4th decade of a nuclear reactor?
I've noticed that quite a few commercial nuclear reactors have an extended outage (they close down for several months) some time late in their third decade, and the maintenance works during the closure involve significant investment. This cost has…
410 gone
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Do ships powered by nuclear reactors use water for shielding?
On a different Stack, I encountered an answer that was making a comparison to nuclear powered naval ships. It was stated that the physical shielding being used was various kinds of metals. This seems... odd to me.
I assume that water is probably…
Ellesedil
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How did the RBMK control rod design cause an increase in reactivity when moved downwards?
I have been trying to understand a particular aspect of the Chernobyl accident - the role of the graphite displacers on the end of the control rods. The basic story is that the graphite displacers caused the reactivity of the core to increase when…
jfowkes
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How do nuclear power plants prevent fuel rods from depleting nonuniformaly?
Power output of nuclear reactors is controlled by control rods that sit in between the fuel rods:
These are pulled out to increase fission rates - and lowered to decrease them.
The control rods are made from neutron absorbing materials - such as…
yippy_yay
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Was the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor a 'true' nuclear explosion?
Was the second - the big - explosion of the reactor core in the Chernobyl catastrophe a true nuclear explosion? There have been those who have said that it was ... but sayings to this effect do not gain much public traction. I think that…
AmbretteOrrisey
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Nuclear wastegate thermal dissipation systems?
How do shoreline nuclear facilities lower the temperature of wastewater generated by their cooling systems before it enters the ocean?
BUzzBuzz
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What is the *typical* quantity (in kg) of uranium-235 present at a given moment in a nuclear plant?
What is the typical quantity (in kg) of uranium-235 present at a given moment in a working nuclear plant?
How does this compare to the typical amount of uranium-235 in a typical nuclear bomb (typically one kg of uranium-235)
Mathieu Krisztian
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What are the key technical challenges to development of traveling wave reactors?
I recently learned about traveling wave reactors (TWRs) on the Netflix Bill Gates special, as an example of a cutting-edge technology Gates is funding which has the potential solve several environmental problems.
The TWR is a nuclear fission reactor…
LShaver
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Which Gen IV reactor types use nuclear waste as fuel?
I have read the Wikipedia article on Generation IV nuclear reactors, but from that article it is not clear to me which of the main reactor types that use nuclear waste to fuel the process. As far as I have been able to understand, Molten Salt…
Anders Gustafsson
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Why aren't nuclear reactors designed to handle the loss of the heat sink?
I always wonder why nuclear power plants aren't designed to handle a loss of the heat sink. At the point at which hydrogen is being made from the water, can't you just remove the water and catch the molten corium into a concrete container until it…
Mark Menge
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Recent breakthrough on Inertial Confinement Nuclear Fusion at NIF
For the very first time, it has been demonstrated that it is now possible to make Nuclear Fusion generate more energy than is required for its equipment to operate, but it is not entirely clear as to how the strategy can be applied to a large-scale…
Prakash_S
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Nuclear, waste heat stirling applications
Could the waste heat normally expelled from nuclear plants run low temperature stirling engines or does it need a specific temperature threshold?
LazyReader
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How can nuclear reactors control the exponential cascade of neutrons fast enough to prevent an explosion?
The Wiki article on nuclear reactor physics states that
the average neutron lifetime in a typical core is on the order of a millisecond, the exponential factor is as small as 0.01, in one second the reactor power will vary by a factor of (1 +…
2080
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What, roughly, are the characteristics of nuclear power in grid management?
Electric grids are volatile: As there's close to no storage capacity, power in must equal power out all the time.
One part of the management toolset is the various power sources attached to a grid. For the most part, it's relatively straight forward…
