RBMK
The RBMK (russian: реактор большой мощности канальный, РБМК; ''reaktor bolshoy moshchnosti kanalnyy'', "high-power channel-type reactor") is a class of graphite moderated reactor, graphite-moderated nuclear reactor, nuclear power reactor designed and built by the Soviet Union. The name refers to its design where, instead of a large steel Reactor pressure vessel, pressure vessel surrounding the entire core, the core is surrounded by a cylindrical annular steel tank inside a concrete vault and each fuel assembly is enclosed in an individual 8 cm (inner) diameter pipe (called a "technological channel"). The channels also contain the coolant, and are surrounded by graphite. The RBMK is an early Generation II reactor and the oldest commercial reactor design still in wide operation. Certain aspects of the original RBMK reactor design, such as the large positive void coefficient, the 'positive scram effect' of the control rods and instability at low ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Soviet Nuclear Power
At its peak in 1982, nuclear power in the Soviet Union accounted for 6.5% of total electricity consumption and the total nuclear capacity installed was 18 GW. However, nuclear power within the Soviet Union declined severely as a result of the 1986 Chernobyl Disaster. History The first nuclear power plant constructed in the world was the Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant, built near Moscow on June 26, 1954. It was intended as an experiment to determine the capabilities of nuclear power in supplying a commercial grid. At the beginning of its operation, it produced 5 MWe. The power plant proved successful in its experiment and four years later, the Siberian Nuclear Power Station with a 100 MWe capacity was installed and subsequently increased to 600 MWe. Following the development, commercial power stations were constructed in Beloyarsk, Novo-Voronezh, Kola, Leningrad, and Armenia. In the year 1960, the Soviet Union had a nuclear power capacity of 605 MWe. By 1975, this capacity was incre ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Chernobyl Disaster
The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the No. 4 nuclear reactor, reactor in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near the city of Pripyat in the north of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Ukrainian SSR in the Soviet Union. It is one of only two nuclear energy accidents rated at seven—the maximum severity—on the International Nuclear Event Scale, the other being the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. The initial emergency response, together with later decontamination of the environment, involved more than Chernobyl liquidators, 500,000 personnel and cost an estimated 18 billion Soviet rouble, roubles—roughly US$68 billion in 2019, adjusted for inflation. The accident occurred during a safety test meant to measure the ability of the steam turbine to power the emergency feedwater pumps of an RBMK, RBMK-type nuclear reactor in the event of a simultaneous loss of external power and major coolant leak. During a pla ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Core Meltdown
A nuclear meltdown (core meltdown, core melt accident, meltdown or partial core melt) is a severe nuclear reactor accident that results in core damage from overheating. The term ''nuclear meltdown'' is not officially defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency or by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It has been defined to mean the accidental melting of the core of a nuclear reactor, however, and is in common usage a reference to the core's either complete or partial collapse. A core meltdown accident occurs when the heat generated by a nuclear reactor exceeds the heat removed by the cooling systems to the point where at least one nuclear fuel element exceeds its melting point. This differs from a fuel element failure, which is not caused by high temperatures. A meltdown may be caused by a loss of coolant, loss of coolant pressure, or low coolant flow rate or be the result of a criticality excursion in which the reactor is operated at a power level that ex ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Smolensk Nuclear Power Plant
Smolensk Nuclear Power Plant (russian: link=no, Смоленская АЭС []) is a nuclear power station in Russia. It is located in the Smolensk region, in Desnogorsk province, approximately 100 km from Smolensk, 115 km from Bryansk and 320 km from Moscow. Smolensk Nuclear Power Plant is the biggest power generating station in the north-western region of the united energy system of the Russian Federation. Smolensk NPP has an outer appearance similar to that of Chernobyl NPP units 3-4, as both are later generation RBMKs. Construction and operation Construction began on the Smolensk NPP in the late 1970s. The NPP was originally intended to be constructed in two phases with units 1 and 2 starting in 1975 and 1976. Followed by units 3 and 4 in the mid-late 1980s. Unit 3 began construction in 1984. However, the construction of the fourth reactor was interrupted by the Chernobyl disaster and plans were cancelled in 1993. The three RBMK-1000 reactors of Smolensk ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant
The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (ChNPP; ; ), is a nuclear power plant undergoing decommissioning. ChNPP is located near the abandoned city of Pripyat in northern Ukraine northwest of the city of Chernobyl, from the Belarus–Ukraine border, and about north of Kyiv. The plant was cooled by an engineered pond, fed by the Pripyat River about northwest from its juncture with the Dnieper. ChNPP was commissioned in phases with the four reactors entering commercial operation between 1978 and 1984. In 1986, reactor No. 4 was the site of the Chernobyl disaster; as a result of this, the power plant is now within a large restricted area known as the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Both the zone and the power plant are administered by the State Agency of Ukraine on Exclusion Zone Management. The three other reactors remained operational post-accident maintaining a capacity factor between 60 and 70%. In total, units 1 and 3 had supplied 98 terawatt-hours of electricity each, with unit ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant
The Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant ( lt, Ignalinos atominė elektrinė, IAE) is a decommissioned two-unit RBMK-1500 nuclear power station in Visaginas Municipality, Lithuania. It was named after the nearby city of Ignalina. Due to the plant's similarities to the infamous Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in both reactor design and lack of a robust containment building, Lithuania agreed to close the plant as part of its accession agreement to the European Union. Unit 1 was closed in December 2004; Unit 2, which counted for 25% of Lithuania's electricity generating capacity and supplied about 70% of Lithuania's electrical demand, was closed on December 31, 2009. Proposals have been made to construct a new nuclear power plant at the same site, but plans have not materialised since then. Reactors The Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant contained two Soviet-designed RBMK-1500 water-cooled graphite- moderated channel-type power reactors. After the Chernobyl disaster of April 1986, t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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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 Nuclear medicine, medical and industrial radiography, 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 th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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VVER
The water-water energetic reactor (WWER), or VVER (from russian: водо-водяной энергетический реактор; transliterates as ; ''water-water power reactor'') is a series of pressurized water reactor designs originally developed in the Soviet Union, and now Russia, by OKB Gidropress. The idea of such a reactor was proposed at the Kurchatov Institute by Savely Moiseevich Feinberg. VVER were originally developed before the 1970s, and have been continually updated. As a result, the name VVER is associated with a wide variety of reactor designs spanning from generation I reactors to modern generation III+ reactor designs. Power output ranges from 70 to 1300 MWe, with designs of up to 1700 MWe in development. The first prototype VVER-210 was built at the Novovoronezh Nuclear Power Plant. VVER power stations have mostly been installed in Russia and the former Soviet Union, but also in China, the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgari ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant
Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant (russian: Обнинская АЭС, Obninskaja AES; ) was built in the "Science City" of Obninsk,Nuclear Engineering International: Obninsk - number one, by Lev Kotchetkov , who was there at the time. Source for most of the information in this article. , about southwest of , . Connected to the [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Void Coefficient
In nuclear engineering, the void coefficient (more properly called void coefficient of reactivity) is a number that can be used to estimate how much the reactivity of a nuclear reactor changes as voids (typically steam bubbles) form in the reactor moderator or coolant. Net reactivity in a reactor is the sum total of all these contributions, of which the void coefficient is but one. Reactors in which either the moderator or the coolant is a liquid typically will have a void coefficient value that is either negative (if the reactor is under-moderated) or positive (if the reactor is over-moderated). Reactors in which neither the moderator nor the coolant is a liquid (e.g., a graphite-moderated, gas-cooled reactor) will have a void coefficient value equal to zero. It is unclear how the definition of 'void' coefficient applies to reactors in which the moderator/coolant is neither liquid nor gas (supercritical water reactor). Explanation Nuclear fission reactors run on nuclear chain ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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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 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |