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Geometric And Material Buckling
Geometric buckling is a measure of neutron leakage and material buckling is a measure of the difference between neutron production and neutron absorption. When nuclear fission occurs inside of a nuclear reactor, neutrons are produced. These neutrons then, to state it simply, either react with the fuel in the reactor or escape from the reactor. These two processes are referred to as neutron absorption and neutron leakage, and their sum is the neutron loss. When the rate of neutron production is equal to the rate of neutron loss, the reactor is able to sustain a chain reaction of nuclear fissions and is considered a critical reactor. In the case of a bare, homogenous, steady-state reactor (that is, a reactor that has only one region, a homogenous mixture of fuel and coolant, no blanket nor reflector, and does not change over time), the geometric and material buckling are equal to each other. Derivation Both buckling terms are derived from the particular diffusion equation which i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuclear Fission
Nuclear fission is a reaction in which the nucleus of an atom splits into two or more smaller nuclei. The fission process often produces gamma photons, and releases a very large amount of energy even by the energetic standards of radioactive decay. Nuclear fission of heavy elements was discovered on Monday 19 December 1938, by German chemist Otto Hahn and his assistant Fritz Strassmann in cooperation with Austrian-Swedish physicist Lise Meitner. Hahn understood that a "burst" of the atomic nuclei had occurred. Meitner explained it theoretically in January 1939 along with her nephew Otto Robert Frisch. Frisch named the process by analogy with biological fission of living cells. For heavy nuclides, it is an exothermic reaction which can release large amounts of energy both as electromagnetic radiation and as kinetic energy of the fragments (heating the bulk material where fission takes place). Like nuclear fusion, for fission to produce energy, the total binding energy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
