How to stop a nuclear reaction using only energy...any theories?

[SamBridge]

 

 

I agree, but uranium reactors produce huge amounts of very long lived radioactive waste. Thorium reactors not only produce much less waste is it much shorter lived and Thorium reactors can be used to "burn" the waste we currently have...

I'm still in the middle of watching the video, but the term "burning" waste, I don't think that's what you want to mean, because physical macroscopic processes don't alter the radioactivity of a material. I suppose if you had a laser more powerful than any laser beam every created in history, you could convert the material into a quark-gluon plasma, which has been done, but not with laser beams, only about 2 particles, it would require tremendous amounts of energy.

[Moontanman]

I'm still in the middle of watching the video, but the term "burning" waste, I don't think that's what you want to mean, because physical macroscopic processes don't alter the radioactivity of a material. I suppose if you had a laser more powerful than any laser beam every created in history, you could convert the material into a quark-gluon plasma, which has been done, but not with laser beams, only about 2 particles, it would require tremendous amounts of energy.

 

 

No I didn't mean chemical burning, that is why I put "burn" in italics, the radioactive waste is altered on a nuclear scale and energy is released in the process...

[SamBridge]

Well after doing some research it seems like a good way to go.

[JohnCli]

CERN found anti-matter right? then why not just detonate an anti-nuclear bomb...of course we still haven't mastered the art of isolating and producing anti particles but if ever we do make those then the anti-nuclear reaction will annihilate the ordinary nuclear reaction. Now since the end result of antimatter meeting matter is a release of energy proportional to the mass as the mass-energy equivalency equation shows.. the only thing left is how to contain the huge amount of energy that will be produced by this reaction?

[SamBridge]

CERN found anti-matter right? then why not just detonate an anti-nuclear bomb...of course we still haven't mastered the art of isolating and producing anti particles but if ever we do make those then the anti-nuclear reaction will annihilate the ordinary nuclear reaction. Now since the end result of antimatter meeting matter is a release of energy proportional to the mass as the mass-energy equivalency equation shows.. the only thing left is how to contain the huge amount of energy that will be produced by this reaction?

Except not only will it be hard to isolate, then transport, but that will create an tremendously bigger explosion than an atomic bomb itself.

[JohnCli]

so yeah scrap that Idea

[John Cuthber]

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_poison

Neutron absorbers do what they say they do, absorb neutrons, that's what I thought before

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_moderator

reduces the speed of neutrons, that's what I thought before too,

With regards to your comment "no, it won't", that makes no sense, the title says you're a chemistry expert so I'd like to think you know that most materials become more dense when they cool down. You argued the process can be damped by the expansion, using basic logic that a child could understand it's pretty simple that the process would become closer to critical if the material contracted and became more dense if your argument that the expansion affects the process is true. Either you didn't know that or you aren't giving me the simple courtesy of wholly reading my posts. Heat builds up. If the container was indestructible, you'd be right perhaps, though perhaps some of the heat could escape through the walls so that it didn't completely dampen the reaction, but it's not, if you read later in my post, you would have read that my statement was justified by that the container could melt eventually, thus exposing the reactor to a cooler atmosphere making the material itself cooler, making it contract. Since it's pretty likely that a chemistry expert would understand how density and temperature are related, I like to think you just skimmed my post without much of a regard instead so to avoid issues like this in the future I suggest you give posts more though and read things more carefully. The fact that you put so little words down and that the only thing you referenced was a rocket launch and not even the heat build up causing expansion seems troubling, and is one of the reason why I'm leaving this site soon.

As you have hypothesized indirectly, if you could vaporize the uranium in a super strong container that wouldn't melt but that would also moderate thermal energy to the outside world without letting radioactive decay out, that would seem to be a solution.

I also did not say putting something in a rocket wouldn't be expensive, that's not the debate, the debate is "how to do it at all", not "what's the most cost effective way".

The biggest joke with this is that you ignored the exploding rocket.

"I like to think you just skimmed my post without much of a regard instead so to avoid issues like this in the future I suggest you give posts more though and read things more carefully."

 

Anyway, as you would know if you understood how the control systems worked, the reactor was shut down. The absorbers were in place and there was no realistic possibility of a criticality incident.

Edited January 23, 2013 by John Cuthber

[JohnCli]

The only thing that went wrong with Chernobyl and Fukishima is....they bought and installed absorbers made in China lol

[swansont]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_poison

Neutron absorbers do what they say they do, absorb neutrons, that's what I thought before

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_moderator

reduces the speed of neutrons, that's what I thought before too,

With regards to your comment "no, it won't", that makes no sense, the title says you're a chemistry expert so I'd like to think you know that most materials become more dense when they cool down. You argued the process can be damped by the expansion, using basic logic that a child could understand it's pretty simple that the process would become closer to critical if the material contracted and became more dense if your argument that the expansion affects the process is true. Either you didn't know that or you aren't giving me the simple courtesy of wholly reading my posts. Heat builds up. If the container was indestructible, you'd be right perhaps, though perhaps some of the heat could escape through the walls so that it didn't completely dampen the reaction, but it's not, if you read later in my post, you would have read that my statement was justified by that the container could melt eventually, thus exposing the reactor to a cooler atmosphere making the material itself cooler, making it contract. Since it's pretty likely that a chemistry expert would understand how density and temperature are related, I like to think you just skimmed my post without much of a regard instead so to avoid issues like this in the future I suggest you give posts more though and read things more carefully. The fact that you put so little words down and that the only thing you referenced was a rocket launch and not even the heat build up causing expansion seems troubling, and is one of the reason why I'm leaving this site soon.

As you have hypothesized indirectly, if you could vaporize the uranium in a super strong container that wouldn't melt but that would also moderate thermal energy to the outside world without letting radioactive decay out, that would seem to be a solution.

 

You're missing the point. A shut-down reactor still produces energy from decay, which is not dependent on the presence of a neutron absorber or moderator — there isn't much fission going on, which is what John Cuthber and Enthalpy were saying. It is this decay heat that caused the problems with Fukushima, not a criticality incident. If you have a positive void coefficient and you boil the water away it can be an issue — that was a problem with Chernobyl, because they were critical at the time.

[SamBridge]

So in other words you're saying that after it becomes less dense, it doesn't matter if it isn't dense because even after it goes back to it's critical density the reaction needs to be in a way "ignited" again, and after becoming less dense the reaction rate slows down to much to enter a self sustaining reaction at it's previous density?

[swansont]

So in other words you're saying that after it becomes less dense, it doesn't matter if it isn't dense because even after it goes back to it's critical density the reaction needs to be in a way "ignited" again, and after becoming less dense the reaction rate slows down to much to enter a self sustaining reaction at it's previous density?

 

If the reactor is critical, heating the system up makes the water less dense and neutrons tend to leak out more if water is the moderator (true of pressurized water reactors, not true of Chernobyl) and the reactor goes subcritical. Cooling would allow it to regain criticality.

 

If the reactor was shut down, it's simply not an issue. The system is not close to criticality.

 

You were speaking of Fukushima earlier, so it was the latter situation. But you need to clarify which one you mean, because it matters a lot.

[SamBridge]

If the reactor is critical, heating the system up makes the water less dense and neutrons tend to leak out more if water is the moderator (true of pressurized water reactors, not true of Chernobyl) and the reactor goes subcritical. Cooling would allow it to regain criticality.

 

If the reactor was shut down, it's simply not an issue. The system is not close to criticality.

 

You were speaking of Fukushima earlier, so it was the latter situation. But you need to clarify which one you mean, because it matters a lot.

Ok, I will admit I may have been wrong. What I was saying that is that I thought John was saying that if the reactor material heated up too much, the critical reaction couldn't take place anymore because the material wouldn't be dense enough for neutrons to have a high enough probability to hit other nuclei. So I assumed that if it did become dense again, that the reaction would take place again, but now I see that I was been because I forgot to think that you would need something to start up the process again, and if the reactor is just broken or shut down, there wouldn't be another neutron generator to bombard the material and break it apart again.

[Dr.Bubafunk]

I believe you would need something with a lot of mass like a whole planet or sun to effectively mediate it...if gravity itself could be contained somehow (don't ask cause I have no clue) then maybe you could do it that way.

[SamBridge]

I believe you would need something with a lot of mass like a whole planet or sun to effectively mediate it...if gravity itself could be contained somehow (don't ask cause I have no clue) then maybe you could do it that way.

..............what?

[howlingmadpanda]

Even if you used fusion to bind them that is still a nuclear blast, you can't use particles and energy directly against particles and energy to stop it, the energy would be carried on Newton's laws my friend the energy is still there.

[JohnCli]

Law of conservation of energy states that "Energy can neither be destroyed nor created" right? so what about let's try to find a way to transform the Explosions and Neutrons into Photons?

 

How can we do that...Explosion inside an Explosion?

[swansont]

Baryon number is also conserved, so you aren't going to be able to convert neutrons into photons. if you have fission from U-235 and a neutron, you are going to end up with 236 nucleons.