One of the concepts that is currently in the spotlight is "nuclear energy". For example, molten salt reactors (LRs) that are preparing to launch 250,000-ton super container ships and high-temperature gas-cooled reactors that have been officially put into commercial operation are all standard advanced civil nuclear energy technologies. So, for this *** technology, how do we define the first three generations?To understand this, it is first necessary to go back to the origins of the reactor. Originally, reactors appeared in the early 1940s, in the middle and late stages of World War II, and their essence was to produce nuclear materials for the manufacture of atomic bombs. For any country or organization to develop a nuclear industry, it must build and operate reactors, just as a canteen must have a stove, firewood or coal before it can use natural gas or electricity to heat food.
Assuming that the first generation cooker uses firewood, the second generation burns coal, the third generation uses clean natural gas, and the direct use of induction cooker without emissions is classified as ***, therefore, the development process of the reactor is basically similar to the upgrade process of the cooktop. The original purpose of the earliest nuclear industry "stove" was to obtain the plutonium-239 needed for the production of the atomic bomb. Plutonium-239 is a fissile nuclear material used in atomic bombs, which is used in small amounts but is very powerful. For example, the most primitive fission bomb used a full more than 60 kilograms of **grade uranium-235, while less than 2 kilograms were reacted in **, and the remaining 58 kilograms were wasted. However, refining 60 kilograms of **-grade uranium-235 would consume one-tenth of the country's electricity in the early days of the great powers, which was inefficient and extremely wasteful. On the contrary, even the original plutonium-239 nuclear bomb can be detonated with just over ten kilograms.
Over time, it was even possible to detonate a hydrogen bomb with less than 1 kilogram of plutonium-239. The process of producing plutonium-239 from reactors not only does not require the consumption of ready-made electricity, but can generate electricity on its own, which is much better than the production of uranium-235 enrichment alone. Therefore, the first reactors used in the production of plutonium-239 were called production reactors. The original purpose of these reactors was primarily for military use. They are designed to use low-enriched uranium as fuel, while high-purity graphite is used as a neutron deceleration material, stacked in piles for reactions. In the middle of the pile, a water circulation system is introduced for cooling. Although later reactors are no longer heaps, they are still called reactors by Xi.
The original production reactor was designed to produce plutonium-239, but it soon became clear that the large amount of high-pressure steam produced during the circulating cooling process was released directly into the atmosphere very wasteful. As a result, people began to use these high-temperature and high-pressure steam to propel steam turbines to generate electricity. The results show that extremely stable power in the hundreds of kilowatts can be easily obtained**. As a result, stable power generation, a by-product of reactors, is gradually gaining more attention and is gradually being used to supply electricity to the civil power grid in the long term. The nuclear powers still retain a certain number of production reactors because they need to continue to obtain plutonium-239, an important raw material for nuclear power. All production reactors will also be able to continue to supply a stable external power supply in the long term. However, the production heaps of the major powers are generally relatively secretive. Even if they do, they rarely disclose their basic parameters such as location, capacity, and power generation.
So, do production reactors count as first-generation nuclear power?Think of it broadly as such. But because production reactors are generally not publicly available, they are not considered first-generation nuclear power in a narrow sense. True first-generation nuclear power refers to purely civilian reactors that are built in the open. So how are the second and third generations divided?