Recent content by MaeWest

Thank all of you. You've been very helpful. Looks like I need to do a mea culpa on the other board.

Thanks. That does help. Just one more question (I think). Where do the initial neutrons come from that starts the chain reaction? If it is the natural decay of the fuel, don't you need to have a "sufficient" number of neutrons to start the chain reaction? or will one do the trick? If...

Quantumpion, But doesn't the "controlled fission reaction" in fact depend upon decay rates? Don't you have to provide enough fuel to keep the reaction supercritical, while controlling the criticality to prevent a meltdown? You don't just glom together a mass or radioactive materials do you...

Candyman, I was originally thinking that decay rates needed to be considered because you have to know how much fuel mass needed to be included just to produce the desired amount of heat for power generation. As I've learned more (I know enough physics to be dangerous, but next to nothing...

Thanks, astronuc. I'll look at the information.

Decay rate help I've been debating decay rates with another poster in another forum. Basically, the other poster has stated "The half-life/decay rate of the substances used in nuclear power generation have nothing to do with the generation of power. That they ARE radioactive is. Spent fuel...

Thanks for all of the responses. They are appreciated. I did, by the way, try to get across the point that the "motion" of which he was speaking is simply the motion of the inertial frame, which is accounted for in SR and appears as time dilation - and got nowhere. It is almost as though...

I have a BS in physics from some time ago. In another forum on another board I have become embroiled in a discussion with another poster about SR and the need to adjust the clocks on GPS satellites to account for SR effects. I need some help trying to explain things. As expressed by the other...