B Reactor
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B Reactor
The B Reactor at the Hanford Site, near Richland, Washington, was the first large-scale nuclear reactor ever built. The project was a key part of the Manhattan Project, the United States nuclear weapons development program during World War II. Its purpose was to convert natural (not isotopically enriched) uranium metal into plutonium-239 by neutron activation, as plutonium is simpler to chemically separate from spent fuel assemblies, for use in nuclear weapons, than it is to isotopically enrich uranium into weapon-grade material. The B reactor was fueled with metallic natural uranium, graphite moderated, and water-cooled. It has been designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark since August 19, 2008 and in July 2011 the National Park Service recommended that the B Reactor be included in the Manhattan Project National Historical Park commemorating the Manhattan Project. Visitors can take a tour of the reactor by advance reservation. Reactor design and construction The reactor was ...
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Washington State Route 24
State Route 24 (SR 24) is a state highway in the south-central region of Washington, in the United States. It travels from Yakima to Othello, across a portion of the Columbia Plateau. The highway crosses the Columbia River on the Vernita Bridge, located near the Hanford Site. SR 24 terminates to the west at an interchange with Interstate 82 (I-82) in Yakima and to the east at SR 26 in Othello. The highway was added to the state highway system in 1937 as Secondary State Highway 11A (SSH 11A), composed of several county-built gravel roads from Yakima to Connell, with a ferry crossing at Hanford. The Hanford section of SSH 11A was closed in 1943 due to wartime activities at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, forcing the state government to relocate the highway to the north side of the Columbia River. The new highway opened in 1961 and was supplanted by the new Vernita toll bridge in 1965. During the 1964 state highway renumbering, SR  ...
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University Of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the best universities in the world and it is among the most selective in the United States. The university is composed of an undergraduate college and five graduate research divisions, which contain all of the university's graduate programs and interdisciplinary committees. Chicago has eight professional schools: the Law School, the Booth School of Business, the Pritzker School of Medicine, the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, the Harris School of Public Policy, the Divinity School, the Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies, and the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering. The university has additional campuses and centers in London, Paris, Beijing, Delhi, and Hong Kong, as well as in downtown ...
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Nuclear Reaction
In nuclear physics and nuclear chemistry, a nuclear reaction is a process in which two atomic nucleus, nuclei, or a nucleus and an external subatomic particle, collide to produce one or more new nuclides. Thus, a nuclear reaction must cause a transformation of at least one nuclide to another. If a nucleus interacts with another nucleus or particle and they then separate without changing the nature of any nuclide, the process is simply referred to as a type of nuclear scattering, rather than a nuclear reaction. In principle, a reaction can involve more than two particles collision, colliding, but because the probability of three or more nuclei to meet at the same time at the same place is much less than for two nuclei, such an event is exceptionally rare (see triple alpha process for an example very close to a three-body nuclear reaction). The term "nuclear reaction" may refer either to a change in a nuclide induced by collision with another particle or to a spontaneous change of ...
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Neutron Moderator
In nuclear engineering, a neutron moderator is a medium that reduces the speed of fast neutrons, ideally without capturing any, leaving them as thermal neutrons with only minimal (thermal) kinetic energy. These thermal neutrons are immensely more susceptible than fast neutrons to propagate a nuclear chain reaction of uranium-235 or other fissile isotope by colliding with their atomic nucleus. Water (sometimes called "light water" in this context) is the most commonly used moderator (roughly 75% of the world's reactors). Solid graphite (20% of reactors) and heavy water (5% of reactors) are the main alternatives. Beryllium has also been used in some experimental types, and hydrocarbons have been suggested as another possibility. Moderation Neutrons are normally bound into an atomic nucleus, and do not exist free for long in nature. The unbound neutron has a half-life of 10 minutes and 11 seconds. The release of neutrons from the nucleus requires exceeding the binding energy ...
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Graphite
Graphite () is a crystalline form of the element carbon. It consists of stacked layers of graphene. Graphite occurs naturally and is the most stable form of carbon under standard conditions. Synthetic and natural graphite are consumed on large scale (300 kton/year, in 1989) for uses in pencils, lubricants, and electrodes. Under high pressures and temperatures it converts to diamond. It is a weak conductor of heat and electricity. Types and varieties Natural graphite The principal types of natural graphite, each occurring in different types of ore deposits, are * Crystalline small flakes of graphite (or flake graphite) occurs as isolated, flat, plate-like particles with hexagonal edges if unbroken. When broken the edges can be irregular or angular; * Amorphous graphite: very fine flake graphite is sometimes called amorphous; * Lump graphite (or vein graphite) occurs in fissure veins or fractures and appears as massive platy intergrowths of fibrous or acicular crystalline ...
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Radiation Protection
Radiation protection, also known as radiological protection, is defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as "The protection of people from harmful effects of exposure to ionizing radiation, and the means for achieving this". Exposure can be from a source of radiation external to the human body or due to internal irradiation caused by the ingestion of radioactive contamination. Ionizing radiation is widely used in industry and medicine, and can present a significant health hazard by causing microscopic damage to living tissue. There are two main categories of ionizing radiation health effects. At high exposures, it can cause "tissue" effects, also called "deterministic" effects due to the certainty of them happening, conventionally indicated by the unit gray and resulting in acute radiation syndrome. For low level exposures there can be statistically elevated risks of radiation-induced cancer, called " stochastic effects" due to the uncertainty of them happening, ...
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Masonite
Masonite is a type of hardboard, a kind of engineered wood, which is made of steam-cooked and pressure-molded wood fibers in a process patented by William H. Mason. It is also called Quartrboard, Isorel, hernit, karlit, torex, treetex, and pressboard. History A product resembling masonite (hardboard) was first made in England in 1898 by hot-pressing waste paper.Akers, 1966, p. x Masonite was patented in 1924 in Laurel, Mississippi, by William H. Mason, who was a friend and protégé of Thomas Edison. Mass production started in 1929. In the 1930s and 1940s, Masonite was used for applications including doors, roofing, walls, desktops, and canoes. It was sometimes used for house siding. Similar "tempered hardboard" is now a generic product made by many forest product companies. The Masonite Corporation entered the door business as a supplier of facings in 1972, and was purchased in 2001 by Premdor Corporation, a door maker, from its former parent International Paper. It no longe ...
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Cast Iron
Cast iron is a class of iron–carbon alloys with a carbon content more than 2%. Its usefulness derives from its relatively low melting temperature. The alloy constituents affect its color when fractured: white cast iron has carbide impurities which allow cracks to pass straight through, grey cast iron has graphite flakes which deflect a passing crack and initiate countless new cracks as the material breaks, and ductile cast iron has spherical graphite "nodules" which stop the crack from further progressing. Carbon (C), ranging from 1.8 to 4 wt%, and silicon (Si), 1–3 wt%, are the main alloying elements of cast iron. Iron alloys with lower carbon content are known as steel. Cast iron tends to be brittle, except for malleable cast irons. With its relatively low melting point, good fluidity, castability, excellent machinability, resistance to deformation and wear resistance, cast irons have become an engineering material with a wide range of applications and are ...
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Heat Shield
In thermodynamics, heat is defined as the form of energy crossing the boundary of a thermodynamic system by virtue of a temperature difference across the boundary. A thermodynamic system does not ''contain'' heat. Nevertheless, the term is also often used to refer to the thermal energy contained in a system as a component of its internal energy and that is reflected in the temperature of the system. For both uses of the term, heat is a form of energy. An example of formal vs. informal usage may be obtained from the right-hand photo, in which the metal bar is "conducting heat" from its hot end to its cold end, but if the metal bar is considered a thermodynamic system, then the energy flowing within the metal bar is called internal energy, not heat. The hot metal bar is also transferring heat to its surroundings, a correct statement for both the strict and loose meanings of ''heat''. Another example of informal usage is the term '' heat content'', used despite the fact that p ...
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Nuclear Reactor Core
A nuclear reactor core is the portion of a nuclear reactor containing the nuclear fuel components where the nuclear reactions take place and the heat is generated. Typically, the fuel will be low-enriched uranium contained in thousands of individual fuel pins. The core also contains structural components, the means to both moderate the neutrons and control the reaction, and the means to transfer the heat from the fuel to where it is required, outside the core. Water-moderated reactors Inside the core of a typical pressurized water reactor or boiling water reactor are fuel rods with a diameter of a large gel-type ink pen, each about 4 m long, which are grouped by the hundreds in bundles called "fuel assemblies". Inside each fuel rod, pellets of uranium, or more commonly uranium oxide, are stacked end to end. Also inside the core are control rods, filled with pellets of substances like boron or hafnium or cadmium that readily capture neutrons. When the control rods are lowe ...
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Calutron
A calutron is a mass spectrometer originally designed and used for separating the isotopes of uranium. It was developed by Ernest Lawrence during the Manhattan Project and was based on his earlier invention, the cyclotron. Its name was derived from California University Cyclotron, in tribute to Lawrence's institution, the University of California, where it was invented. Calutrons were used in the industrial-scale Y-12 uranium enrichment plant at the Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The enriched uranium produced was used in the Little Boy atomic bomb that was detonated over Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. The calutron is a type of sector mass spectrometer, an instrument in which a sample is ionized and then accelerated by electric fields and deflected by magnetic fields. The ions ultimately collide with a plate and produce a measurable electric current. Since the ions of the different isotopes have the same electric charge but different masses, the heavier isotopes ...
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Y-12 National Security Complex
The Y-12 National Security Complex is a United States Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration facility located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, near the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It was built as part of the Manhattan Project for the purpose of enriching uranium for the first atomic bombs. It is considered the birthplace of the atomic bomb. In the years after World War II, it has been operated as a manufacturing facility for nuclear weapons components and related defense purposes. Y-12 is managed and operated under contract by Consolidated Nuclear Security, LLC (CNS), which is composed of member companies Bechtel National Inc., Leidos Inc., Orbital ATK, Inc, and SOC LLC, with Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. as a teaming subcontractor. CNS also operates Pantex Plant in Texas. History Y-12 is the World War II code name for the electromagnetic isotope separation plant producing enriched uranium at the Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, as part of th ...
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