Page 2 - Control Rods News Today

In addition to the water being pumped in from the ocean, thats a backup plan, one set into the design of a reactor such as this. see these plates that hold the rods? those can be put in place to control the fuel rods and slow them down and trap that nuclear radiation to make sure it does not release into the air. control rods here are marked in yellow and they can slide down tbhb this case they divide the fuel rods in the four different areas. so again you get more containment on the inside of t...

Appears to be an explosion and fire in unit 4. apparently the fuel is burning. this reactor was shut down prior to the earthquake, but they have a fuel pool, nuclear fuel pool and its apparently on fire. >> brian: thats 4. we know there was problems at 1, 2, and 3. and there have been problems with more. >> steve: the big worry is a meltdown. when youve got the meltdown because then all that nuclear stuff melts out of the concrete and steel bubble and then goes to the containment floor and the w...

Nuclear reaction from happening in an orderly way. i dont know if you ever had the chance to develop a photo in a dark room before everything went digital. you know how you put the photo, or may have seen it in a movie, somebody working with an actual -- with actual film and developing chemicals in an actual dark room. put the photo in the developer until the image comes in like you want it, then once it is in that, you put it in a different chemical bath to stop the developing. thats like the c...

To be very dangerous for children, infants, and pregnant mothers. >> okay. lets go through what should happen at these plants during a disaster? after a quake the nuclear plants, they shut down automatically, right? then you have back-up diesel generators. thats what pumps the water to cool down the reactors? >> well, the process that occurs is at first control rods are inserted that stop the reaction, but the core, the fuel, has a tremendous amount of radioactivity in it and as the radioactivit...

Relieve the pressure and avoid a meltdown. im joined now by cham dallas, professor of disaster management at the university of georgia. william. >> thank you, will. >> professor, we know that the problem lies inside the cooling system, in at least a couple of the reactors. what are officials doing to avoid disaster? >> well, right now, the -- they have backup systems, and some of the backup systems havent gone the way they wanted. the thing to remember is that they have already stopped the react...

The raw material for nuclear weapons. but second, beyond the nuclear waste problem, nuclear power production is kind of a high-wire act, when the whole idea behind what youre doing depends on this plant controlling a nuclear chain reaction, you really cant afford anything that might interrupt your control. if theres any disturbance, say an earthquake, the chain reaction process is immediately shut down, control rods drop into the hot nuclear core to stop the fission process. even when it is not ...

Disaster. one, two, three, and four. this is friday. 9.0 earthquake and tsunami hit japan in 2:00 in the afternoon local time. and a state of emergency declared later at the daiichi fukushima power plant. authorities reveal the cooling systems are not working. so heres saturday now. 4:19 p.m., officials reveal radiation levels at fukushima are eight times the normal level. hours later, an explosion in reactor one. here is why. heres reactor one here. you can see whats happening inside as theyre ...

They are creating a nuclear reactor to generate heat. the whole point of nuclear power is that you create an environment in which fission happens. a nuclear chain reaction happens, but it is controlled, so it does not produce an explosion. it just generates heat in a controlled way instead. use that heat to essentially boil water. actually, you literally use it to boil water. boiling water makes steam, steam spins a turbine, and that makes electricity. thats the basic idea behind the 40-year-old...

>> thats how amazing this little cube of one pound of uranium is. >> but that tells you how much energy is stored in there. >> it is what boils the steam into pressure, that pressures the turbines that makes the power. you could put a giant bowl of coal down here and run it forever, but this control rod, fuel rod, steam line makes an awful lot of power in a small space. so lets go the pressure vessel, the control rods, the fuel rods. zoom right in. the fuel rods made of uranium 235 go into the w...

Happens. a nuclear chain reaction happens, but it is controlled, so it does not produce an explosion. it just generates heat in a controlled way instead. use that heat to essentially boil water. actually, you literally use it to boil water. boiling water makes steam, steam spins a turbine, and that makes electricity. thats the basic idea behind the 40-year-old reactors in japan in so much trouble now. when the reactor is on, in effect, the uranium pellets inside the big 12 foot long fuel rods ar...