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What is the activity of the fission products of a nuclear reactor?
Wiki User
∙ 14y ago
It's a complicated story, there are many different elements in the fission products, and they have widely different half lives and radioactive characteristics. Some decay quickly and turn into other isotopes which may have much longer half lives. I recommend you read the first part of the linked article, if you want to go further there is much more detail available in the rest of the article. Note that nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons produce differing actual quantities and types of fission products because in the reactor they are retained in the spent fuel whereas in a nuclear explosion they are scattered widely and so have a more immediate effect.
Wiki User
∙ 14y ago
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What type of reaction take place in a nuclear reactor?
Nuclear fission, not to be confused with fusion.
What is the purpose of boron in nuclear reactors?
Boron is used inside a nuclear reactor inside a control rod which is used to 'soak' up the neutrons inside the nuclear reactor, a control rod can be used to control the rate of fission inside a nuclear reactor.
What is meant by chain reaction in nuclear reactor?
Basically a chain reaction (nuclear or chemical) is a self sustaining auto-catalytic reaction.In a nuclear reactor it is a neutron chain reaction, where each neutron released in every fission event can trigger another fission event. In a nuclear reactor the excess neutrons must be disposed of, which is the purpose of the control rods so that the reaction can be kept at some desired constant rate.
Why excess reactivity is built in nuclear reactor?
Because some of the fission products are neutron poisonsthat as they build up reduce the reactivity. Without the excess reactivity available to overcome this the reactor would shut itself down until the neutron poisons decayed away. This effect was observed in the first production reactor at Hanford (B reactor) when it was first started.
How does uranium fuel get heated in a nuclear reactor?
Fuel in a nuclear reactor is heated by fission reactions. In fission, fuel atoms absorb a neutron, become unstable, and "split apart" into a two approximately equal parts. These parts are called fission fragments, and they come away from the fission event with tremendous kinetic (mechanical) energy. As this happens in a fuel element, the atomic nuclei can travel only a tiny distance before slamming into nearby atoms. This activity is extremely violent on the atomic scale, and it generates a lot of thermal energy (heat). The heat will get fuel element very hot, and that thermal energy will be collected and carried away by the primary coolant in the reactor.
What are the name of fission fragements in a nuclear reactor?
Fission products, in the case of uranium, krypton 92 and barium 141.
What is a used fuel in nuclear power plants?
The used fuel in a nuclear power plant is the nuclear fuel being discharged from the nuclear reactor after being irradiated during reactor operation. It is usually composed of trans-uranium heavy elements, a wide variety of fission products (that resulted from the nuclear fission processes in the nuclear reactor) and products of radioactive decay (produced before and after fuel discharge from the nuclear reactor).
What does fission happen in?
Nuclear reactor
A nuclear reactor uses the energy from a controlled?
nuclear fission
Parts of nuclear reactor where nuclear fission occurs?
core
What happens in a nuclear reactor to create electricity?
Nuclear Fission
Which section of a nuclear reactor does nuclear fission occurs?
The fission happens in the fuel, which is usually in fuel rods inside the reactor. The rods are spaced at a particular distance apart and fill the reactor.
Where does fission occour?
Nuclear fission occurs in fission reactors, a type of nuclear reactor, and in fission bombs, more commonly knows as atomic bombs.
What three things did nuclear plants intend to do with long-lived fission waste products?
all reactor waste products with lifetimes over a few hundred years make excellent reactor fuel, they should all be recycled and reused in reactors. these are all transuranics, not fission products.
What are the three main advantages of a fusion reactor compared to a fission reactor?
Nuclear fusion reactors do not exist yet as we don't know how to build them. All nuclear reactors are nuclear fission reactors.
What is nuclear energies most common use?
That released by fission in a nuclear reactor
What is the most common nuclear energy used?
That released by fission in a nuclear reactor
