Recent content by BCRion

36 months may be optimistic, but it is believable from the point of starting construction to going critical. The reason a lot of plants took a long time was due to weaknesses in the licensing process allowing for interruptions and delays at many junctures. This increases construction time and...

Depends on whether or not you believe the linear-no threshold model. LNT observes that the dose to consequence of high radiation doses (from atomic bomb survivors mostly) varies linearly. This is extrapolated down to a zero dose, meaning that any dose is theoretically harmful. It should...

The goal of ITER is to achieve a Q = 10, to have a high enough thermal efficiency for a power plant design.

But it is not so simple. We need to rule out other potential causes of cancer as well. It may be true there is a correlation between the use of DU weapons and a rise in cancer rate, but was DU singled out as the agent actually causing the increase in cancer? I think not. In a war you...

The usability is more from a practical engineer's standpoint and not a physicist's, but they are both valid ways of looking at the entropy. Suppose I want to make a new electricity source. I choose metal blocks at different temperatures. Yes, I can do this. The only requirement to produce...

Take the statistical mechanics version of entropy as order and disorder with a grain of salt. Although it is a correct description, it is not always the best model to view entropy. A given system or amount of energy has a certain type of quality related to it. This quality is the ability of...

As far as the universe, it is not a question of perpetual motion, but the energy availability to do useful work. The universe is constantly expending its useful energy (primarily through nuclear fusion) and one day no further fusion will be possible once too of the Hydrogen has been converted...

There are some interesting technologies using transmutation to convert the particularly bad fission products into more stable products that are much easier to handle and have less disposal time. The advancements in the past five years have been quite encouraging, although the economics still...

Keep in mind this uses the linear-no threshold model. Keep in mind back when those studies were done, we knew a lot less about the effects of small radiation doses. Although we are still not absolutely certain, we do know that a linear-no threshold approach is wrong and very much overly...

DU, being less radioactive than natural Uranium pulled straight out of the ground would really not be that hard to dispose of. It's radioactivity is so low and of such a short range that merely digging a hole and putting it inside would be enough. As far as bunker busters and such, there is...

I recommend going to Hyperphysics. It covers the technical sides of how Three Mile Island and Chernobyl occurred. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/hph.html Just click on Nuclear Physics, and then on Nuclear Energy on the concept map.

Yes, what do you want to know? I suggest you check out their website at: http://www.fnal.gov/

An amu is a unit of mass, a mole is a unit of quantity. The conversion from grams to amu is 1.66*10^-24 g/amu.

Check out the Canadian Nuclear Society: Click on the Education link and scroll to the bottom of the page. http://www.cns-snc.ca/home_eng.html

The cross section is conceptually the area a nucleus presents to a target, having units of length squared. You can interpret this as roughly the relative probability of a nuclear intereaction occurring. Things with a high cross section have a much higher likelyhood than things with a low one...