taking a breather

We are currently making our way thru the theory portion of the class and have started with reactor theory. I’ll admit that I felt a little cocky entering this phase, as I was by definition the reactor theory guru on at least one boat. I can definitely tell why Rickover was so adamant about the enrichment of fuel and the nuclear properties of the other materials he selected in his reactor designs. As soon as you put a good amount of U238 in to the picture, the cores get large (infinite) and the transuranics become very complicated. Not that he couldn’t have trained us, but the actual nuclear responses are very, very slow and getting the margins that he did wouldn’t have been very difficult. If interested, you could look at Doppler broadening and chemical shimming for examples.

One of my former minions commented on my reaction to the attitudes of the instructors here, like the Navy instructors were cocky, well just imagine if they never had to leave after getting here and never had to work with the students that they taught (ie, you wouldn’t send a kid to the fleet that you wouldn’t want to have work for/with you). Navy instructors were very mindful of this and were reminded routinely by their supervisors. Several of us former Navy nukes were talking today and agreed that there was very little actual ownership of the final product. I am amazed that the instructors don’t realize that a student in the current license class could be their boss in ten years or so, while they are still trying to “make it to retirement.” Another astounding difference.

There are the similarities, the variance of atomic concentration and reactivity worth of Xenon over the core lifetimes is amazing similar. Now off to review some reactivity balances and look at the NRC Exam bank.