4 Oct Class Summary

Salam.

Hey guys, just re-cap from Monday class. Sorry for the late entry. On Monday class, we have a lecture on control rods, a little bit on xenon, and neutron poison. Maybe you guys wondering, what is
this man? Right? Well, maybe 

I’m not an expert on this matter, but I will try my best to explain to you guys. God bless.

For today entry, I will share to you guys some info on control rods. 

Ok, firstly, as always, what is a control rod?

                          As you can see from the picture, it is an assembly of many rods (upper picture)

The mechanism of control consists of arranging control rods in assembles which are usually mounted vertically within the reactor core and are inserted into the guide tubes with the fuel elements.

Control rod is located inside the nuclear reactor. (See the yellow eclipse-upper picture)

Control rod is a rod-shaped component containing a material that is a strong neutron absorber. A control rod can be made from variety of materials such as Silver (Ag), Indium (In), Cadmium (Cd), Boron (B) and Hafium (Hf). 

Control rods are used in nuclear reactor to control the rate of fission of Uranium and Plutonium. The fission process affects the thermal power of the reactor, the amount of steam produced, and the electricity generated. The property that is a must for control rod material is ability to have a heavy absorption capacity for neutrons so that they can carry out the control function effectively. Another property of control rods is that the material should not start a fission reaction despite the heavy absorption of neutrons. 

In fact, you can imagine the function of a control rod just like a blotting paper which sucks the extra ink that has spilled somewhere but does not let it spread in wider region. 

For purposes of safety of a reactor in case the lifting mechanism also suffers a failure, the control are arranged in such a way that they will get into the stop position and shut down the reactor completely in such a case.

 

 reference

•  Control rod
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