Nuclear reactor

From Citizendium
Revision as of 10:35, 14 May 2010 by imported>Howard C. Berkowitz
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This article is a stub and thus not approved.
Main Article
Discussion
Related Articles  [?]
Bibliography  [?]
External Links  [?]
Citable Version  [?]
 
This editable Main Article is under development and subject to a disclaimer.

A nuclear reactor is a complex physical facility in which controlled nuclear reactions, generally involving criticality (nuclear), take place for a variety of purposes. These purposes may include heat generation for electrical generation, naval propulsion, or heating industrial plants; the preparation of radioactive isotopes for use in nuclear medicine, industrial testing, or creating controlled sources of radiation; production of nuclear materials such as plutonium or tritium; or making materials temporarily radioactive for procedures such as neutron activation analysis. While there can be some overlap of functions, larger reactors tend to be optimized for a single purpose; part of the design failures causing the Chernobyl Disaster were that the reactor tried to be equally effective for electric power and plutonium generation.

Core

Cooling