Recent content by Emfuser

You can get the info you need by simply going though Lamarsh's Intro to Nuclear Eng book, then to Glasstone & Sesonske, and then to the Ott books. The Ott Reactor Statics book has an intro, but the material starts off presuming that you've had the basic reactor physics education from books like...

Building a reactor for a home heating device is definitely a Rube-Goldberg sort of adventure. It's fun to talk about, but is wholly impractical and definitely dangerous. You'd be better off just piping your current heater exhaust into a CO2 scrubber.

That looks like the old NEI generic schematic, but seems appropriate for wikipedia. http://www.nucleartourist.org/type/rbmk.htm

If you can get your hands on a copy of John Lamarsh's book Introduction to Nuclear Engineering, you'll find all the basic information and formulas you need in a very easy format.

Of interesting note is that DoE has contracted the Shaw group and AREVA to down-blend old weapon plutonium with depleted tails and other previously undesirable materials to make MOX (mixed-oxide) fuel for use in commercial reactors. Their facility at Savannah River is under construction, and I...

My fusion prof back in university (also a physicist) would get livid if anyone ever brought up Pons & Fleischman. As Dr. Greenman pointed out, the most obvious signs one would expect from the reaction those men, and others who follow in trying to replicate their experiments are trying to...

(sorry for my long absence from the thread) We are most definitely in agreement there. For that fresh new core, you absolutely need a source to go critical. I look forward to doing startups on new cores in the future, as new plants go online.

Be careful with your analogies. They might be declared as "WRONG!", and you'll be sent to nuclear jail! No lay person or passerby should be able to understand this stuff!

Correct Only on that first core, of completely fresh Uranium, do we need a source for startup. After all, we're not going critical without any neutrons. (waits for Morbius to come in fuming over my language :biggrin: ) We can yank them after the first cycle, but they usually sit there...

For somebody claiming not to be in an ivory tower somewhere, you most certainly talk like you are in one. The fact still remains that I work in nuclear power, you work in research. I work on reactor engineering and core design at a nuclear power plant, you work at a lab. I have tried to make...

I believe you misinterpret my words. I have a real problem with people stuck in the theoretical world who go around beating people over the head with their degrees. I have an even bigger problem with the people who not only beat people over the head with their degrees, but they do so to...

Not really Morbius is the typical paper-bound scientist. Completely stuck in a paper world with a very narrow, rigid view of things. He reminds me of my neutronics teacher who was a physics guy. There's no hate, just an amusement at the unnecessary rigidity when talking specifically about...

Good lord... why is it always the book-bound guys that come up with this stuff? If you want to talk in the purely theoretical realm, then by all means, feel free to talk right out of a reactor dynamics book all day. However if you want to talk about the world of operating power reactors (which...

What the...? That would be akin to suggesting that I could start-up, run, and accelerate an internal combustion engine without fuel. No neutrons, no criticality. No criticality, no super-criticality. I'm not sure who you're generalizing this to, but operating power reactors that...

About 16 new reactors between about 10 utilities are in various early processes for building new nuclear plants. I work at one of them. I'm surprised to see how quiet this has been to the rest of the country, but we're definitely going to build. Look for the first new generation 3+ plants...