If anything unusual occurs, the control rods immediately drop, shutting off the nuclear reaction.
Even though the plant shut down the production of electricity, the nuclear reaction keeps generating heat.
In the test at the Bushehr nuclear power plant, "dummy" fuel rods were used, so no nuclear reaction began.
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It works by using electricity generated from a nuclear reaction to accelerate charged particles out of the back of the spacecraft.
Uranium 235 is the key material in starting a nuclear reaction, and its acquisition is the main problem facing states which want to go nuclear.
In fact his trick (and the reason why it might be possible to produce a nuclear reaction in such a small piece of apparatus) is that what he does propose is not really fusion at all.
It was in a University of Chicago squash court that Enrico Fermi set off the first controlled nuclear chain reaction in 1942.
In Japan in 1999, an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction at a uranium-reprocessing plant killed two employees and spewed radioactive neutrons over the countryside.
Ouchi and his colleagues had just set off the one thing that nuclear workers fear most - a spontaneous, uncontained nuclear chain reaction.
This meant likely degradation of their zirconium alloy cladding, the possible release of hydrogen, and - by Tepco's admission - the risk that a nuclear chain reaction could begin.
The company noted that European coal generation increased 13% in June over the last 12 months as a result of nuclear cutbacks, a knee-jerk reaction to nuclear power given the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan, and higher gas prices, further feeding demand for coal.
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"The air quality is very bad here and any project with the word nuclear causes a negative reaction among people, " says Mr Danielevsky.
Fear and risk aversion rule the short term reaction to nuclear melt down in Japan, the 3rd largest economy in the world.
Yet while the reaction to Fukushima might slow the growth of nuclear power, it won't reverse it.
Or they can be introduced with uranium 235, which in this process has a much lower risk of an uncontrolled reaction than it does in today's nuclear plants.
When there are worries about nuclear safety - such as following the tsunami in Japan - the Royal Society of Chemistry fears that the public reaction is still shaped by such emotive, negative associations.
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