Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch
I thought it might be an interesting thread where if you learn something that you didn't know that makes you go woah or hmmmm or whatever.
I was reading a book on submarine history today and the author explained how a nuclear reactor worked and the simplicity of a complex situation blew me away.
Basically what was said was if a U-234 atom was a mouse trap with two ping pong balls on the trap arm and the ping pong balls represent a neutron. You start an atomic reaction by throwing a ping pong ball at a mouse trap setting it off. The mouse trap snaps which represents the splitting of the atom, and it throws the two ping pong balls into the air (neutrons) the ping pong balls will hit other mouse traps (atoms) and send those balls into the air and they will set off (split more u-235 atoms) more mouse traps and eventually it would set off all of the traps as the reaction doubles and doubles and doubles.
What this represents is a uncontrolled fission reaction and what basically happens in an atomic bomb as every time an atom is split it releases energy.
So in a reactor they need to control the reaction and the energy released, so if you hang specially trained monkeys from the ceiling and train them to catch one out of two neutrons (ping pong balls) it allows you to control the amount of energy released and also allows you to conserve the fuel (U-355).
These monkeys represent control rods in a reactor and are usually made of Cadmium or Indium which do a good job of stopping neutrons which allows you to control the speed and size of the reaction. The more control rods that you insert into a reactor pile the slower the reaction. If you put all control rods into a pile you can literally stop a reactor.
Anyways, I thought that description was really cool
|
To me adding the monkeys and mousetraps makes it far more confusing.