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Berkeley Research Reactor
The Berkeley Research Reactor was an active research nuclear reactor housed in the basement of the Etcheverry Hall in University of California, Berkeley. The reactor became critical on 10 August 1966 and was decommissioned in 1987. Description The Berkeley Research Reactor was a TRIGA (Training, Research, Isotope production, General Atomics) Mark III open pool reactor with a steady rated thermal power of 1 MW, capable of being pulsed to 2,000 MW. Professor Lawrence Ruby was the chairman of the Nuclear Engineering Reactor Committee and held key roles in the design and analysis of Etcheverry Hall to support reactor licensing, then served as the first reactor supervisor after it was completed. It first achieved criticality on August 10, 1966, and was used for irradiation of various items, as a teaching tool, and to generate radionuclides. Notable events On 16 September 1985, a fuel cladding Nuclear fuel is material used in nuclear power stations to produce heat to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuclear Reactor
A nuclear reactor is a device used to initiate and control a fission nuclear chain reaction or nuclear fusion reactions. Nuclear reactors are used at nuclear power plants for electricity generation and in nuclear marine propulsion. Heat from nuclear fission is passed to a working fluid (water or gas), which in turn runs through steam turbines. These either drive a ship's propellers or turn electrical generators' shafts. Nuclear generated steam in principle can be used for industrial process heat or for district heating. Some reactors are used to produce isotopes for medical and industrial use, or for production of weapons-grade plutonium. , the International Atomic Energy Agency reports there are 422 nuclear power reactors and 223 nuclear research reactors in operation around the world. In the early era of nuclear reactors (1940s), a reactor was known as a nuclear pile or atomic pile (so-called because the graphite moderator blocks of the first reactor were placed into a tall pi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Etcheverry Hall
Etcheverry Hall houses the Departments of Mechanical, Industrial, and Nuclear Engineering of the College of Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. Etcheverry Hall is named after Bernard A. Etcheverry, professor of irrigation and drainage from 1915–51, who later served as chair of the Department of Irrigation and Drainage from 1923–51. Built in 1964, it is located on the north side of Hearst Avenue, across the street from the main campus. The basement of Etcheverry Hall housed the Berkeley Research Reactor between 1966 and 1987. Bernard A. Etcheverry Bernard Alfred Etcheverry was born in San Diego, California on June 30, 1881 and graduated from UC Berkeley in 1902. He married Helen Hanson on August 6, 1903 and together they had two sons, Bernard Earle and Alfred Starr. His first teaching appointment was to the Department of Civil Engineering at UC Berkeley, where he taught during the 1902–03 academic year. After that, he taught physics and civil engineer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant university and the founding campus of the University of California system. Its fourteen colleges and schools offer over 350 degree programs and enroll some 31,800 undergraduate and 13,200 graduate students. Berkeley ranks among the world's top universities. A founding member of the Association of American Universities, Berkeley hosts many leading research institutes dedicated to science, engineering, and mathematics. The university founded and maintains close relationships with three national laboratories at Berkeley, Livermore and Los Alamos, and has played a prominent role in many scientific advances, from the Manhattan Project and the discovery of 16 chemical elements to breakthroughs in computer science and genomics. Berkeley is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
TRIGA
TRIGA (Training, Research, Isotopes, General Atomics) is a class of nuclear research reactor designed and manufactured by General Atomics. The design team for TRIGA, which included Edward Teller, was led by the physicist Freeman Dyson. Design TRIGA is a swimming pool reactor that can be installed without a containment building, and is designed for research and testing use by scientific institutions and universities for purposes such as undergraduate and graduate education, private commercial research, non-destructive testing and isotope production. The TRIGA reactor uses uranium zirconium hydride (UZrH) fuel, which has a large, prompt negative fuel temperature coefficient of reactivity, meaning that as the temperature of the core increases, the reactivity rapidly decreases. Because of this unique feature, it has been safely pulsed at a power of up to 22,000 megawatts. The hydrogen in the fuel is bound in the uranium zirconium hydride crystal structure with a vibrational energ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
General Atomics
General Atomics is an American energy and defense corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, specializing in research and technology development. This includes physics research in support of nuclear fission and nuclear fusion energy. The company also provides research and manufacturing services for remotely operated surveillance aircraft, including the General Atomics MQ-1 Predator, Predator drones, airborne sensors, and advanced electric, electronic, wireless, and laser technologies. History General Atomics (GA) was founded on July 18, 1955, in San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ..., California, by Frederic de Hoffmann with assistance from notable physicists Edward Teller and Freeman Dyson. Originally the company was part of the General Atomic divi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Open Pool Reactor
NC State's PULSTAR Reactor is a 1 MW pool-type research reactor with 4% enriched, pin-type fuel consisting of UO2 pellets in zircaloy cladding.image:Pulstar1.jpg, The control room of North Carolina State University, NC State's Pulstar Nuclear Reactor. A swimming pool reactor, also called an open pool reactor, is a type of nuclear reactor that has a core (consisting of the fuel elements and the control rods) immersed in an open pool of usually water. The water acts as neutron moderator, cooling agent and radiation shield. The layer of water directly above the reactor core shields the radiation so completely that operators may work above the reactor safely. This design has two major advantages: the reactor is easily accessible and the whole primary cooling system, ''i.e.'' the pool water, is under normal pressure. This avoids the high temperatures and great pressures of nuclear power plants. Pool reactors are used as a source of neutrons and for training, and in rare instances ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Criticality (status)
In the operation of a nuclear reactor, criticality is the state in which a nuclear chain reaction is self-sustaining—that is, when reactivity is zero. In supercritical states, reactivity is greater than zero. Applications Criticality is the normal operating condition of a nuclear reactor, in which nuclear fuel sustains a fission chain reaction. A reactor achieves criticality (and is said to be critical) when each fission releases a sufficient number of neutrons to sustain an ongoing series of nuclear reactions. The International Atomic Energy Agency defines the ''first criticality date'' as the date when the reactor is made critical for the first time. This is an important milestone in the construction and commissioning of a nuclear power plant. See also *Criticality accident *Critical mass *Prompt criticality In nuclear engineering, prompt criticality describes a nuclear fission event in which criticality (the threshold for an exponentially growing nuclear fission chain ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Radionuclide
A radionuclide (radioactive nuclide, radioisotope or radioactive isotope) is a nuclide that has excess nuclear energy, making it unstable. This excess energy can be used in one of three ways: emitted from the nucleus as gamma radiation; transferred to one of its electrons to release it as a conversion electron; or used to create and emit a new particle (alpha particle or beta particle) from the nucleus. During those processes, the radionuclide is said to undergo radioactive decay. These emissions are considered ionizing radiation because they are energetic enough to liberate an electron from another atom. The radioactive decay can produce a stable nuclide or will sometimes produce a new unstable radionuclide which may undergo further decay. Radioactive decay is a random process at the level of single atoms: it is impossible to predict when one particular atom will decay. However, for a collection of atoms of a single nuclide the decay rate, and thus the half-life (''t''1/2) for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fuel Cladding
Nuclear fuel is material used in nuclear power stations to produce heat to power turbines. Heat is created when nuclear fuel undergoes nuclear fission. Most nuclear fuels contain heavy fissile actinide elements that are capable of undergoing and sustaining nuclear fission. The three most relevant fissile isotopes are uranium-233, uranium-235 and plutonium-239. When the unstable nuclei of these atoms are hit by a slow-moving neutron, they frequently split, creating two daughter nuclei and two or three more neutrons. In that case, the neutrons released go on to split more nuclei. This creates a self-sustaining chain reaction that is controlled in a nuclear reactor, or uncontrolled in a nuclear weapon. Alternatively, if the nucleus absorbs the neutron without splitting, it creates a heavier nucleus with one additional neutron. The processes involved in mining, refining, purifying, using, and disposing of nuclear fuel are collectively known as the nuclear fuel cycle. Not all ty ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuclear-free Zone
A nuclear-free zone is an area in which nuclear weapons (see nuclear-weapon-free zone) and nuclear power plants are banned. The specific ramifications of these depend on the locale in question. Nuclear-free zones usually neither address nor prohibit radiopharmaceuticals used in nuclear medicine even though many of them are produced in nuclear reactors. They typically do not prohibit other nuclear technologies such as cyclotrons used in particle physics. Several sub-national authorities worldwide have declared themselves "nuclear-free". However, the label is often symbolic, as nuclear policy is usually determined and regulated at higher levels of government: nuclear weapons and components may traverse nuclear-free zones via military transport without the knowledge or consent of local authorities which had declared nuclear-free zones. Palau became the first nuclear-free nation in 1980. New Zealand was the first Western-allied nation to legislate towards a national nuclear free zon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
