education
Right-sizing a power plant
The average electrical powerplant in the US has a name plate capacity of 120 MWe and delivered capacity of 46 MWe when averaged over the
Coolants
Water The role of coolant is to transfer heat from the nuclear core to the thermal application, be it steam generation for an electrical turbine or direct process heat. The main considerations in choosing the coolant have historically been heat transfer effectiveness, neutronic moderation for thermal reactors, and availability. In
Risk Reduction
Approach for Widescale Adoption The risk related to nuclear fission is first described and it is argued that aversion to nuclear at the local level
Enrichment
Increasing the percentage of U-235 in the material enhances the fuel’s ability to sustain fission reactions which means the reactor can be smaller, use
Reactor Control
Reactor Dynamics Changing Power Level To change the power level we need the ability to change the core conditions to our liking, making it critical,
Building a Reactor
A nuclear reactor is just a system that can get heavy elements to break apart in an efficient manner. The reactor itself, the nuclear core,
