Sentences with phrase «enough radioactive decay»
Not exact matches
In addition, if the melted nuclear fuel proves bad enough — like Chernobyl's lethal mass of molten core known as the «elephant's foot» — it will have to be entombed for a number of years rather than removed, because of radiation risk from what is essentially a cooled shell of ceramic armor surrounding a highly radioactive core that remains hot and is still undergoing radioactive decay.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/
Natural circulation in the reactor alone is enough to remove all the heat generated by the radioactive decay of the elements in the reactor fuel.
In a series of papers published online today in Science, researchers report that according to Dawn observations, Vesta did indeed agglomerate enough rocky debris as it grew to heat itself by the decay of the rock's radioactive elements.
Vesta appears to have been large enough and hot enough to melt internally from decaying radioactive elements as well as impacts so that lighter elements floated upwards from denser material to form layers towards its surface.