Talk:Light water graphite-moderated reactor

I think this page is inaccurate in a couple of respects.

The RBMK is actually capable of using unenriched, natural uranium. However it was designed mainly to use slightly enriched uranium recovered from PWR fuel.

In both of these configurations the core was unstable. The most significant retrofit to the remaining RBMKs has been to increase the enrichment and to decrease the number of fuel rods and the size of the core, to provide stability. The control rods have also been redesigned so that an emergency "scram" does not now have the initial effect of increasing reactivity owing to the insertion of the graphite on the control rod tips.

The RBMK was also designed to operate continuously, without needing to shut down for refueling.

Hmmm. Yes, I agree with the anonymous comments above, this article needs a complete rewrite, and more important a new name.

"Light water graphite moderated reactor" is not a generally accepted term in nuclear engineering, and sounds like a type of Light Water Reactor. However, Light Water Reactor or LWR is the accepted term for a light water moderated reactor, such as a PWR or BWR.

Confusion of reactor types is very prevalent, I have even heard Chernobyl described as a "PWR" which it certainly was not. There is some political motivation for this. Those who oppose nuclear power want to emphasise the similarities between Chernobyl and other currently available designs, and particularly the LWR. Whether that was the motivation for this title I have no idea, and it's not important. The important thing is, the title as it stands is not a good one from a NPOV anyway.

RBMK is an acronym for Russian words that mean "large channel power reactor" (not in that order), and is a commonly used English term. As both the article and the heading need to change, my suggestion is that we write a new article under RBMK, including the accurate content from both this talk page and the parent article. I've made a start. Andrewa 01:33 20 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I have put most of the content of this page into the new RBMK page. Some of it however appears to apply to Chernobyl #4 particularly not to the RBMK generally (eg the size and number of fuel elements) and some of it seems to apply to all nuclear power reactors not just the RBMK (eg the need to refuel) and some is even inaccurate as has been pointed out. This content is not IMO appropriate for the RBMK page.

The likening of the fuel assemblies to PWR assemblies is doubtful. As a fully thermalised channel reactor, the RBMK fuel is far more similar to CANDU fuel.

Comments? See also the talk and history pages for RBMK. Andrewa 10:10 20 Jun 2003 (UTC)

It looks like RBMK is a complete replacement for this page. Should this become a redirect? --Andrew 19:53, Apr 28, 2004 (UTC)

Redirected to RBMK by Aarchiba. &mdash; oo64eva (AJ) (U @ 07:42, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)