The tsunami after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake devastated a vast coastal area of eastern Japan. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor suffered meltdowns of its uranium fuel rods, resulting in the release of radioactive isotopes. One of the most environmentally critical isotopes released was strontium-90 (90Sr), a fission product of uranium and plutonium which has a half-life of 29 years, thus rem...

Pressurized water reactors are typically surrounded in the radial direction by neutron reflectors made from stainless steel and water. These decrease leakage provide protection of pressure vessel fast neutrons damaging its integrity. Such a reflector influences multiplication factor core distribution flux fission power inside core. All these effects can be analyzed full-core simulations using m...

The design, construction and control of artificial self-organized systems modelled on dynamical behaviours of living systems are important issues in biologically inspired engineering. Such systems are usually based on complex reaction dynamics far from equilibrium; therefore, the control of non-equilibrium conditions is required. Here we report a droplet open-reactor system, based on droplet fu...

Pyrochemical processes are under development at Argonne National Laboratory for recovery of transuranium (TRU) elements from light water reactor spent fuel. The recovered TRU elements will be used as fuel in the integral fast reactor (IFR). Burning these long-lived isotopes for electrical power generation has the additional benefit of reducing the burden on the geological repository for their l...

A review of the chemistry occurring inside a nuclear power plant during a serious reactor accident is presented. This includes some aspects of the behavior of nuclear fuel, its cladding, cesium and iodine. This review concentrates on the chemistry of an accident in a water-cooled reactor loaded with uranium dioxide or mixed metal oxide fuel. Subjects: Chemistry; Environmental Chemistry; Inorgan...

In the first half of the 20 century nuclear fusion and fission were both seen as processes that could potentially be harnessed as a powerful energy source. Research into fusion began in the 1920’s, but it was too technically challenging to make a working fusion reactor. Fission developed much more successfully during the Second World War, when North America’s Manhattan Project attempted to use ...

A High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (HTGR) is one of the renewed reactor designs to play a role in nuclear power generation. This reactor design concept is currently under consideration and development worldwide. The combination of coated particle fuel, inert helium gas as coolant and graphite moderated reactor makes possible to operate at high temperature yielding a high efficiency. In this ...

Aluminum-coated plates, containing a uranium silicide (U3Si2) meat dispersed in an aluminum matrix, are commonly used the fuel elements of Material Testing Reactors (MTRs). These typically comprised narrow channels formed by parallel flat which allow coolant flow to remove heat fission reactions. It is important mention that thickness plates much smaller than their width and height. The high ra...

Herndon‟s georeactor at the center of Earth is immune to meltdown, which is not the case for recently published copy-cat georeactors, which would necessarily be subject to “hot” nuclear fuel, prevailing high-temperature environments, and high confining pressures. Herndon‟s georeactor uniquely is expected to be self-regulating through establishing a balance between heat-production and actinide s...