what is heavy water?

Question

what is heavy wter used in necular power plants?

Answer 1

deuterium oxide, D2O or 2H2O. Heavy water can be used to create tritium, a principal source of energy release in a thermonuclear weapon.

Answer 2

To elaborate a little more, Deuterium is an isolated particle of hydrogen, and is an isotope of it. The reason it is isolated, is because Deuterium readily absorbs neutrons to form into Hydrogen, the unstable Deuterium fits perfectly with the enrichment of Uranium, as Uranium must lose neutrons but stabalize its proton-neutron ratio so that it becomes radioactive. Otherwise, you would simply get a radiated (And otherwise useless) Helium atom, along with an isotope of Uranium, or perhaps tritium in some cases. Which is useful, but not for the exact purpose of Nuclear power.

Answer 3

Heavy water is used in certain types of nuclear reactors where it acts as a neutron moderator to slow down neutrons so that they can react with the uranium in the reactor. The CANDU reactor uses this design. Light water also acts as a moderator but because light water absorbs as well as thermalizes neutrons, reactors using light water must use enriched uranium rather than natural uranium, otherwise criticality is impossible.

Heavy water is a loose term which usually refers to deuterium oxide, D2O or 2H2O. Its physical and chemical properties are somewhat similar to those of water, H2O. The hydrogen atoms are of the heavy isotope deuterium, in which the nucleus contains a neutron in addition to the proton found in the nucleus of the hydrogen atom.

Answer 4

Deuterium Oxide; used 2 slow down the chain reaction.

Answer 5

Heavy water is water where the H atoms are replaced with deuterium atoms.

It is used to catch particles.

Answer 6

Heavy water is a loose term which usually refers to deuterium oxide, D2O or 2H2O. Its physical and chemical properties are somewhat similar to those of water, H2O. The hydrogen atoms are of the heavy isotope deuterium, in which the nucleus contains a neutron in addition to the proton found in the nucleus of the hydrogen atom. This isotopic substitution alters the bond energy of the hydrogen-oxygen bond in water, altering the physical, chemical, and especially biological properties of the substance to a larger degree than is found in most isotope-substituted chemical compounds.

Heavy water should not be confused with hard water or with tritiated water; however heavy water can be used to create tritium, a principal source of energy release in a thermonuclear weapon.

Neutron moderator
Heavy water is used in certain types of nuclear reactors where it acts as a neutron moderator to slow down neutrons so that they can react with the uranium in the reactor. The CANDU reactor uses this design. Light water also acts as a moderator but because light water absorbs as well as thermalizes neutrons, reactors using light water must use enriched uranium rather than natural uranium, otherwise criticality is impossible.

Because heavy water reactors can easily use natural (unenriched) uranium, heavy water becomes a material of concern in efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation. Heavy water production reactors can be designed to turn uranium into bomb-usable plutonium without requiring enrichment facilities (although this is not the only route for using natural uranium, see below). Heavy water production reactors have been used for this purpose by India, Israel, Pakistan, North Korea, Russia and USA. On August 26, 2006 Iran announced the launch of a new phase in its Arak heavy-water reactor project. [5]

There is no evidence that heavy water power reactors, such as the CANDU design, have been used for military plutonium production, but in theory any working nuclear reactor can be used for making weapons-grade plutonium, by simply running the reactor for a shorter-than-normal time after fueling, and then by reprocessing the fuel.

Due to its potential for use in nuclear weapons programs, large industrial quantities of heavy water are subject to government control in several countries. Suppliers of heavy water and heavy water production technology typically apply IAEA administered safeguards and material accounting to heavy water. (In Australia, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation (Safeguards) Act 1987). In the U.S. and Canada, non-industrial quantities of heavy water (i.e., in the gram to kg range) are routinely available through chemical supply dealers, and directly from the world's major producer Ontario Hydro, without special license. Current (2006) cost of a kg of 99.98% reactor-purity heavy water, is about $600 to $700. Smaller quantities or reasonable purity (99.9%) may be purchaced from chemical supply houses at prices of roughly $1 per gram.

It is worth noting that nuclear reactors for the production of plutonium can be run without either enriched uranium or heavy water, if they use very highly purified carbon as the moderator (the Nazis, due to a mistake in dealing with impure carbon, did not know this). In fact, in the U.S., the first experimental atomic reactor (1942), as well as the Manhattan Project Hanford production reactors which produced the plutonium for the Trinity test and Fat Man bombs, all functioned with neither enriched uranium nor heavy water.

Answer 7

one with minerals in it.