The reactor core would be no more than several metres wide and about ten metres long.
The enormous heat generated by the radioactive fuel in the reactor core needs a constant flow of cold water.
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The water leak occurred in thousands of tubes that carry heated water from the reactor core through the plant's steam generators.
That thinking changed on March 28, 1979, when a small valve stuck open, cooling water escaped and the reactor core of TMI's Unit 2 began to melt.
The exercise, with a command centre in Poundbury, Dorchester, will test their response to the scenario of a radioactive leak from a submarine with a damaged nuclear reactor core.
In addition to driving the turbines to create electricity, the steam generators are "one of the barriers between the radioactive material in the reactor core and ultimately the external environment, " Jaczko noted.
In like manner, I believe that reactors should be designed such that an earthquake of any magnitude could not destroy the reactor or its containment shell, further that if the reactor core was to start to melt down, the melt down itself would shut the reactor down and, at the very worst, the reactor would entomb itself with no potential release of radiation into the environment.
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The core of a nuclear reactor operates at about 550 degrees Fahrenheit, well below the temperature of a coal furnace and only slightly hotter than a kitchen oven.
All of the rods from the fuel core were put into the spent fuel pool above the reactor at that time.
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At Purdue University in Indiana, scientists are working on a reactor-like device that uses water circulated by gravity to keep the core cool.
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Each of the reactors will be a small, modular, 125MW advanced light water reactor, which at the present time includes a design for the nuclear core and steam generator to be located at the same site, with passive safety designs.
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