1. Control rods are only made of graphite in fast reactors (the dangerous Russian ones).
2. Control rods are only fed from the top down in pressurized water reactors.
3. If you put too much cold water in a light water, thermal reactor (a reactor where fission is driven by low energy neutrons), then that reactor will go super prompt critical and explode.
4. I think after the early nuclear reactor designers, who probably knew the early bomb designers, saw what an atomic bomb could do, they decided it needed to be able to shut down quickly. After all, isn't it a popular rumor that Fermi coined the term "SCRAM", which stood for something control rod axe man, because there was a guy sitting on top of the pile with an axe so he could cut a rope holding a control rod above the core?
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and by super prompt critical i mean as highly supercritical as possible. i really should have just said supercritical
super prompt critical = critical on prompt neutrons alone
1. Control rods are only made of graphite in fast reactors (the dangerous Russian ones). 2. Control rods are only fed from the top down in pressurized water reactors. 3. If you put too much cold water in a light water, thermal reactor (a reactor where fission is driven by low energy neutrons), then that reactor will go super prompt critical and explode. 4. I think after the early nuclear reactor designers, who probably knew the early bomb designers, saw what an atomic bomb could do, they decided it needed to be able to shut down quickly. After all, isn't it a popular rumor that Fermi coined the term "SCRAM", which stood for something control rod axe man, because there was a guy sitting on top of the pile with an axe so he could cut a rope holding a control rod above the core?