ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Nuclear power

It's a good few years since I read all the nitty-gritty on the atomic theory.

If you can dig out the details for us, it would be great.

Scott,

I'm no speed typist so I'll keep this real short. Most of you can let your eyes glaze over, or skip to the lat few lines for a little humor.

Also, U239 does exist, but only for a very short time & you won't find it even in trace quantities.

There is, for practical purposes, no naturally occuring Plutonium left on earth. This is due to it's short 1/2 life of 24,000 years. Some PU239 is created by natural processes, but would be a vanishingly small percentage of any ore sample you dug up.

Plutonium can be created in a reactor by bombarding U238 with neutrons & when U238 absorbs a neutron it becomes U239, quickly decaying (about 20 minutes) to Neptunium239 and then (couple of days) to PU239.

Now comes the humor.

How can you tell a nuclear weapons technician? He always washes his hands before going to the bathroom.

Related humor- What is the motto of all EOD (explosive ordnance disposal) teams? If you see us running, catch up.

Tom

Funny this thread is going on at the moment. The 6 p.m. news here just had some item about a new design of reactor opening at Windscale (north of England).

I only caught the tail end of the report, but it sounded like they were talking about putting Pu directly into the core, and something about the whole reactor then being radiation swamped for evermore, rather than just the core ?

That's what it sounded like anyway. I'll see if I can track down any more details.

Oh yes.....
What's the favorite food of a British nuclear scientist designing computer circuitry for a nuclear plant?

Fission chips, of course!

Sorry... Couldn't resist!

Ah, I found it. It's actually a MOX reprocessing plant:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/england/newsid_1577000/1577219.stm

Scott (35),

You mentioned the development of fusion power. You might find this interesting (from the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority);
www.ukaea.org.uk/fusion/findex.htm

Thanks to everyone for the information.
I'll add more later.

Scott SET