Talk:Nuclear reactor

• Archive 1 (up to May 25, 2007):

Power output

The article should mention the power output of a typical modern reactor. AxelBoldt 02:03, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Historic development

"The only purpose for these reactors was the mass production of plutonium (primarily at the Hanford Site) for nuclear weapons against Japan"

The "against japan" part is only right when you know how WWII ended. At the time, the fear was that Germany would develop nuclear weapons before the allies, and the purpose of the Manhattan project was primerily to use the weapon against Nazi Germany. Now the war in Europe ended before the bomb was finished, and then it was decided that it could be used against Japan instead. Japan did not have capacity to develop the bomb at the time. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.75.59.10 (talk) 08:29, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Classification by type of nuclear reaction

Under the heading "Radioactive decay" I have removed the last sentence which read "it is the best way for producing energy in the future"

Aside from the fact there was no capital letter, the obvious next question would be "Says who?" —Preceding unsigned comment added by Finewinescotland (talk • contribs) 08:54, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

How it works

Simply listing the components does not help. Diagrams of a nuclear reactor apparatus would be much more effective, explaining each step in the mechanism.

Louiechefei28848888 (talk) 04:04, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

This section is duplicated in nuclear power, and though that article refers to this one as the main, it in fact contains more information than the How It Works section here. It's also been marked as needing citation. I cleaned up some of the description text in How It Works, but citations and coordination between these two articles will still be needed. Mishlai (talk) 13:01, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

-I've moved the following from the article to here:

"The rate of fission in a reactor is not capable of reaching sufficient levels to trigger a nuclear explosion (even if the fission reactions increased to a point of being out of control, it would melt the reactor assembly rather than form a nuclear explosion). Enriched uranium is uranium in which the percent composition of uranium-235 has been increased from that of uranium found in nature. Natural uranium is only 0.72% uranium-235; the rest is mostly uranium-238 (99.2745%) and a tiny fraction is uranium-234 (0.0055%)."

This text has been marked as uncited in the nuclear power article for a few months and I don't know the citations either. I'm not sure that we can even make that statement... it's probably best to say something more along the lines of "nuclear reactors differ from nuclear weapons in that reactors are designed to fission at a controlled rate." We could perhaps also cite some of the design criteria that affect this - certainly fuel enrichment and density are important to that, as well as many other factors - geometry, poisons, and so on. The nuclear explosion article defines a nuclear explosion so vaguely that I'm not even sure we can definitively say that all reactors are incapable of producing it's definition - "rapid release of energy from an intentionally high-speed nuclear reaction." Clearly being intentional or not doesn't determine whether a rapid energy release could be classed as an explosion. In any case, while I support the goal of reassuring people that reactors != nuclear bombs, we can't make definitive "this can't happen" statements without a good reference.

I'd like to expand this section to explain more and in better detail, and I think these topics will see more treatment. Anyone have sources on differences between weapons and reactors? I've found this

http://www.isanw.org/facts/weapons.html#node13

But it's not great. Mishlai (talk) 10:39, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Two Changes to the Fusion Reactor Section

I would like to pose two changes to the Fusion Reactor Section:

1. While the statement that fusion reactors can operate "without the complexities of handling actinides," I think it should be mentioned that D-T (ITER's reaction) and D-D fusion reactions still produce highly energetic neutron radiation. I would like to mention this so a newcomer to the article will know that fusion reactions have inherent setbacks (aside from the sustainability issue).
2. I would like to contend the statement that ITER is an attempt to "commercialize fusion power." ITER's purpose is to show that sustainable, controlled fusion reactions are possible and, if so, perform radiation damage/material tests. Commercialization is an entirely different endeavor.

(Sorry to be so nit-picky.) THaskin (talk) 01:06, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable. Go for it!

Neutronicity and persistent radioactivity from fusion reactions is discussed somewhere in Wikipedia already, but can't hurt to have it here too. --JWB (talk) 03:00, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Modern terminology "actinoid"

I haven't given a reference in the text for the change, but it's here if anyone's interested. The WP article has already been converted. --Old Moonraker (talk) 08:33, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

You say actinoid, I say actinide

Apparently the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry decided many years ago to change the name of lanthanides and actinides to lanthanoids and actinoids. Yet somehow the word has not gotten out. I had not heard of the term before, and I've read quite a few papers. It raises the question: what if they invented a "standard" and nobody adopted it? Or perhaps: if a standard grows in the forest and no one knows about it, is it really a standard? But seriously, if no one in the nuclear energy business uses the term, is it really the "standard"? I think we should return to the terminology that is normally used. If someone wants to drop a footnote that chemists have changed the name, but this change hasn't been picked up in the nuclear field, that would be fine. NPguy (talk) 23:55, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

It was new to me, too. My main reason for preferring "oid" was consistency with the Actinoid article, which opens with “The actinoid (according to current IUPAC terminology; previously actinide) series...” However the focus there is chemistry, not the nuclear industry. The citation above is pretty firm, but the one in the text isn't from a mainstream publication.--Old Moonraker (talk) 06:48, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Classification by size

please include a classification by size and mention Micro nuclear reactors

Bombs

Following the spirit of this edit, I'm considering moving the text again, to the caption of the "nuclear fission" image. Views? --Old Moonraker (talk) 16:34, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

No objections: done it. Thanks to User:98.217.14.211 for noticing this. --Old Moonraker (talk) 08:22, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

The smallest

What is the smallest fission reactor ever built?