Nuclear Technology:

Nuclear Technology:
● Nuclear energy is a form of energy
released from the nucleus, the core of
atoms, made up of protons and
neutrons.
●
● This source of energy can be
produced in two ways: fission – when
nuclei of atoms split into several parts
– or fusion – when nuclei fuse
together.
● Nuclear fission is a reaction where
the nucleus of an atom splits into
two or more smaller nuclei, while
releasing energy.
●
● Each time the reaction occurs, there
is a release of energy in the form of
heat and radiation.
●
● The heat can be converted into
electricity in a nuclear power plant,
similarly to how heat from fossil fuels
such as coal, gas and oil is used to
generate electricity.
● For instance, when hit by a neutron,
the nucleus of an atom of
uranium-235 splits into two smaller
nuclei, for example a barium nucleus
and a krypton nucleus and two or
three neutrons.
●
● These extra neutrons will hit other
surrounding uranium-235 atoms, which
will also split and generate additional
neutrons in a multiplying effect, thus
generating a chain reaction in a
fraction of a second.
● Uranium has two primordial isotopes: uranium-238 and
uranium-235.
● Uranium-238 makes up the majority of the uranium in ● Inside nuclear power plants,
the world but cannot produce a fission chain reaction, nuclear reactors and their
while uranium-235 can be used to produce energy by equipment contain and control
fission but constitutes less than 1% of the world’s the chain reactions, most
uranium. commonly fuelled by
● uranium-235, to produce heat
● To make natural uranium more likely to undergo through fission. The heat warms
fission, it is necessary to increase the amount of the reactor’s cooling agent,
uranium-235 in a given sample through a process typically water, to produce
called uranium enrichment. steam.
● ●
● Once the uranium is enriched, it can be used effectively ● The steam is then channelled to
as nuclear fuel in power plants for three to five years, spin turbines, activating an
after which it is still radioactive and has to be disposed electric generator to create
of following stringent guidelines to protect people and low-carbon electricity.
the environment. ●
●
Uranium Enrichment

● Natural uranium is only 0.7% U-235, the fissionable isotope.

● The other 99.3% is U-238 which is not fissionable.
● The uranium is usually enriched to 2.5-3.5% U-235 for use in light
water reactors.
● Centrifugal separators are used in uranium enrichment.
● The enriched uranium fuel used in fission reactors cannot be used
to make a bomb.
● It takes enrichment to over 90% to obtain the fast chain reaction
necessary for weapons applications.
● Enrichment to 15-30% is typical for breeder reactors.
● Uranium enrichment poses a nuclear proliferation risk
because the same technology that can produce LEU
for reactor fuel can also be used to produce HEU for
nuclear weapons.
●
● There are no technical barriers to prevent countries
with enrichment capabilities from using them to
enrich uranium to the higher levels required for
nuclear weapons, only legal prohibitions.
●
● The NPT also requires NNWS to negotiate and
conclude safeguards agreements with the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),
whose inspectors are tasked with monitoring states’
programs to verify that their declarations about their
nuclear materials and activities are correct and
complete.
Critical mass
● A critical mass is the smallest amount of fissile material needed for
a sustained nuclear chain reaction.
●
● The critical mass of a fissionable material depends upon its nuclear
properties, its density, its shape, its enrichment, its purity, its
temperature, and its surroundings.
●
● When a nuclear chain reaction in a mass of fissile material is
self-sustaining, the mass is said to be in a critical state in which
there is no increase or decrease in power, temperature, or neutron
population.
Criticality:
● Criticality is a nuclear term that refers to the balance of neutrons in
the system.
● Balance of neutrons can be achieved using moderators and control
rods.
● When the neutron population remains constant, this means there is a
perfect balance between production rate and loss rate, and the
nuclear system is said to be “critical.”
●
● “Subcritical” refers to a system where the loss rate of neutrons is
greater than the production rate of neutrons and therefore the
neutron population decreases as time goes on.
●
● “Supercritical” refers to a system where the production rate of
neutrons is greater than the loss rate of neutrons and therefore the
neutron population increases.
Types of Nuclear Reactors
● There are various types of reactors based on moderators, coolants,
technologies used.
● All commercial power reactors are based on nuclear fission.
●
● They generally use uranium and its product plutonium as nuclear
fuel, though a thorium fuel cycle is also possible.
●
● Fission reactors can be divided roughly into two classes, depending
on the energy of the neutrons that sustain the fission chain reaction:
thermal reactors and fast neutron reactors.
Light-water reactor (LWR)
●
● The light-water reactor (LWR) is a type of thermal-neutron reactor
that uses NORMAL WATER, as opposed to heavy water, as both its
coolant and neutron moderator.
●
● Thermal-neutron reactors are the most common type of nuclear
reactor, and light-water reactors are the most common type of
thermal-neutron reactor.
●
● There are three varieties of light-water reactors: the pressurized
water reactor (PWR), the boiling water reactor (BWR), and (most
designs of) the supercritical water reactor (SCWR).
Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR)
● The PWR uses regular water as a coolant.
● The primary cooling water is kept at very high pressure so it does
not boil.
● Pressurized water reactors (PWRs) constitute the large majority of all
Western nuclear power plants.
● In a PWR, the primary coolant (water) is pumped under high
pressure to the reactor core where it is heated by the energy
generated by the fission of atoms.
● The heated water then flows to a steam generator where it transfers
its thermal energy to a secondary system where steam is generated
and flows to turbines which, in turn, spin an electric generator.
● In contrast to a boiling water reactor, pressure in the primary coolant
loop prevents the water from boiling within the reactor.
● PWRs were originally designed to serve as nuclear marine
propulsion for nuclear submarines
Pressurized Heavy-Water Reactor (PHWR):
● Uses heavy water (deuterium oxide D2O) as its coolant and neutron
moderator.
● The heavy water coolant is kept under pressure, allowing it to be
heated to higher temperatures without boiling, much as in a
pressurized water reactor.
● While heavy water is significantly more expensive than ordinary light
water, it creates greatly enhanced neutron economy, allowing the
reactor to operate without fuel-enrichment facilities (offsetting the
additional expense of the heavy water) and enhancing the ability of
the reactor to make use of alternate fuel cycles.
● Nuclear power is a low-carbon source of energy,
because unlike coal, oil or gas power plants, 1. Tarapur Atomic Power Station (MH) –
nuclear power plants practically do not produce First in India
CO2 during their operation.
2. Kakrapar Atomic Power Station (GJ)
●
3. (Kalpakkam) Madras Atomic Power
● Nuclear reactors generate close to one-third of
Station (TN)
the world’s carbon free electricity and are
crucial in meeting climate change goals. 4. Narora Atomic Power Station (UP)
● 5. Kaiga Nuclear Power Plant (KR)
● Approximately 2.5% of India’s energy requirements 6. Rajasthan Atomic Power Station (RJ)
are met through nuclear energy. 7. Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant
● (TN)
● India has 22 nuclear reactors in operation in 7
nuclear power plants, having an installed capacity
of 6780 MW.
●
● International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
is an international organization that seeks to promote the
peaceful use of nuclear energy, and to inhibit its use for
any military purpose, including nuclear weapons.
● The IAEA was established as an autonomous organisation
on 29 July 1957.
● Though established independently of the United Nations
through its own international treaty, the IAEA Statute, the
IAEA reports to both the United Nations General Assembly
and Security Council.
Role of the IAEA
● The IAEA establishes and promotes international standards and guidance for the
safe and secure use of nuclear energy to protect people and the environment.
● The IAEA supports existing and new nuclear programmes around the world by
providing technical support and knowledge management.
● Through its safeguards and verification activities, the IAEA oversees that nuclear
material and technologies are not diverted from peaceful use.
●
● Review missions and advisory services led by the IAEA provide guidance on the
activities necessary during the lifetime of production of nuclear energy: from the
mining of uranium to the construction, maintenance and decommissioning of
nuclear power plants and the management of nuclear waste.
●
● The IAEA administers a reserve of low enriched uranium (LEU) in
Kazakhstan, which can be used as a last resort by countries that are in urgent
need of LEU for peaceful purposes.
● The Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) ( "London Club" )
is a multilateral export control regime and a group of
nuclear supplier countries that seek to prevent nuclear
proliferation by controlling the export of materials,
equipment and technology that can be used to
manufacture nuclear weapons.
●
● The NSG was founded in response to the Indian nuclear
test in May 1974.
●
● Nations already signatories of the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) saw the need to further
limit the export of nuclear equipment, materials or
technology.
● Carbon dating is a widely-used method to establish the age of organic
materials, things that were once living.
●
● The dating method is based on the fact that Carbon-14 (C-14), an isotope
of carbon with an atomic mass of 14, is radioactive, and decays at a well
known rate.
●
● The most abundant isotope of carbon in the atmosphere is C-12.
●
● Because plants and animals get their carbon from the atmosphere,
they too acquire C-12 and C-14 in roughly the same proportion as is
available in the atmosphere.
●
● When they die, their interactions with the atmosphere stops. While C-12 is
stable, the radioactive C-14 reduces to one half of itself in about 5,730
years — known as its ‘half-life’.
●
● The changing ratio of C-12 to C-14 in the remains of a plant or animal after
it dies can be measured, and can be used to deduce the approximate time
when the organism died.
● Carbon dating cannot be used to determine the age of non-living
things like rocks, for example.
●
● Also, the age of things that are more than 40,000-50,000 years old
cannot be arrived at through carbon dating.
●
● This is because after 8-10 cycles of half-lives, the amount of C-14
becomes almost very small and is almost undetectable.
●
● So, instead of carbon, decays of other radioactive elements that
might be present in the material become the basis for the dating
method.
● These are known as radiometric dating methods.
●
● Two commonly employed methods for dating rocks are
potassium-argon dating and uranium-thorium-lead dating.
●
● The radioactive isotope of potassium decays into argon, and their
ratios can give a clue about the age of rocks.
●
● Uranium and thorium have several radioactive isotopes, and all of
them decay into the stable lead atom.
●
● The ratios of these elements present in the material can be
measured and used to make estimates about age.
●
● There are also methods to determine how long an object has
remained exposed to sunlight.
●
● These apply different techniques, but are again based on radioactive
decays and are particularly useful in studying buried objects or
changes in topology.
●
● The most common of these is called cosmogenic nuclide dating, or
CRN, and is regularly applied to study the age of ice cores in polar
regions.
● Isotopes are members of a family of an element that all have
the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons.
●
● The number of protons in a nucleus determines the element's
atomic number on the Periodic Table. Different mass number
●
● For example, carbon has six protons and is atomic number 6.
● Physicists in Japan discovered a ● Uranium (92U) is a naturally
previously unknown isotope of uranium, occurring radioactive element
with atomic number 92 and mass that has no stable isotope.
number 241, i.e. uranium-241. a ●
half-life of 40 minutes ● It has two primordial isotopes,
● uranium-238 and uranium-235,
● The discovery of a new neutron-rich that have long half-lives and
uranium isotope is the first since 1979 are found in appreciable
● quantity in the Earth's crust.
● The researchers accelerated
uranium-238 nuclei into plutonium-198
nuclei at the KEK Isotope Separation
System.
●
● This is how they identified uranium-241
and measured the mass of its nucleus.
●
● So, systematically measuring the mass of “uranium and its
neighbourhood elements yields essential nuclear information
to understand the synthesis of such heavy elements in
explosive astronomical events”.
●
● What shapes the large nuclei of heavy elements take and how
often (or rarely) defines the boundaries of models that
physicists use to design nuclear power plants and models of
exploding stars.
●
● The arrangement of protons and neutrons in an atomic
nucleus follows some rules. We know these rules are based
on the nuclei’s properties and structure.
●
● “In general, an atom’s mass is slightly lower than the sum of
the masses of protons, neutrons, and electrons
● There is particular interest in ‘magic number’ nuclei: containing a
number of protons or neutrons such that the resulting nucleus is
highly stable.
●
● The heaviest known ‘magic’ nucleus is lead (82 protons). Physicists
have been trying to find the next such element.
●
● “We’d like to extend the systematic mass measurements towards
many neutron-rich isotopes, at least to neutron number 152, where a
new ‘magic number’ is expected,” Dr. Wada said. Their work is a “first
step” in this direction, he added.
●