Development of productivity started in 1981

Chapter 84 3MW Reactor Construction (Part )
After returning to the underground base, Wang Jiankun first checked the cooling system to ensure it was operating normally.

Once the reactor starts operating, it will generate a lot of heat per hour. If the cooling system fails, the temperature of the underground base will rise to an extremely high level. Even if the ventilation system is operating at full capacity, the temperature will soar to over 40 degrees.

People in the underground base will be suffocated to death. In that case, Wang Jiankun will have to terminate the operation of the reactor, wasting precious helium and uranium 235.

After checking that there was no problem, he began to concentrate on increasing the enrichment of uranium 235.

The method is still the same as the last magnification measurement method. With the improvement of Wang Jiankun's mental power, the magnification factor has been greatly improved. The uranium atom can be magnified to a diameter of about 3 meters, and its nucleus is about the size of a small volleyball.

Once the nuclear size of uranium 235 is measured, it is not difficult to purify it. According to a certain proportion, a part of uranium 235 is extracted and put into ceramic balls, and then the other uranium is also put into the ceramic balls according to the proportion.

In the early stage, Wang Jiankun manufactured 360 ceramic balls with an abundance of 3% for the experimental operation of the reactor, and then manufactured those with an abundance of 20% after the operation was successful.

It took about two hours to produce 2 ​​ceramic fuel balls, which were then placed into the feed box using tools.

After pressing the filling switch, the fuel balls were placed into 6 pipes respectively. At this time, the uranium 235 was still fissioning very slowly according to its half-life, so the temperature indicator only rose a little.

Before starting the neutron source, Wang Jiankun carefully checked it again to make sure there were no omissions.

After Chieko helped to check against the drawings and received the information that the inspection was completed and there were no abnormalities, Wang Jiankun decisively pressed the start switch.

The moment the button is pressed, the neutron source shielding device is removed, and a large number of slow neutrons enter the center of the reactor, penetrate the graphite layer and ceramic layer, and bombard the uranium nucleus.

With his super powers, Wang Jiankun saw the following scene: the fuel ball exploded like a drop of cold water falling into an oil pan. The contact point changed instantly, and the uranium nucleus shattered, releasing a large amount of energy and fast neutrons.

Fast neutrons penetrate the ceramic shell and reach the pipe wall, where they are slowed down by a layer of neutral beryllium attached to the pipe. Some of the fast neutrons that escape are slowed down by the graphite layer.

After being slowed down, fast neutrons become slow neutrons, which can react with uranium 235. This process is like a pile of scattered firecrackers. When a lit firecracker is thrown into the pile, other firecrackers are also lit one after another, and the burning speed increases exponentially.

Once the chain reaction starts, the neutron source will no longer have any effect. After the detection equipment checks that the temperature has reached the set value, it will shut down the neutron source.

At this time, Wang Jiankun had been using his superpowers to observe fission reactions, which is also a unique way of studying high-energy particles.

Other scientists need a lot of large and expensive equipment to observe the collision of neutrons with uranium nuclei and cause them to fission into other atomic nuclei. Moreover, the observation method can only be indirect, and the possible process can be inferred through certain phenomena.

Wang Jiankun could see intuitively that this was a guarantee for his confidence in conducting microscopic particle research on his own.

After the circular particle accelerator was built, the detection and analysis equipment in it was no longer necessary for Wang Jiankun. His superpowers allowed him to intuitively observe the collision process and the products after the collision. Of course, the premise was that at that time he had conducted more in-depth research on microscopic particles and could observe structures smaller than protons.

When he saw that the uranium 235 in all the fuel balls had begun to react and the movement of atoms in the reactor had become violent, Wang Jiankun judged that the temperature had reached about 1000 degrees.

He opened his eyes and looked at the thermometer, which showed that it was already 1030°C and was still rising rapidly. When the temperature reached 1200°C, the helium storage tank was opened, and high-pressure helium quickly came to the gas pipeline in the center of the hot reactor.

The helium is heated rapidly and the core temperature drops to more than 600 degrees. At this time, the helium is still absorbing heat, but the helium that has passed through the front has reached the boost nozzle and then reaches the turbine after being boosted.

The blades are pushed by the helium to rotate, driving the shaft and the connected generator. At this time, the energy bursting in the atomic nucleus begins to be converted into mild electricity.

The temperature and pressure of the helium arriving later became higher and higher, pushing the turbine to rotate faster and faster. When the air inlet temperature of the turbine reached 1150°C and the pressure reached 12 MPa, the temperature of the core stabilized.

This is because the conversion of fission energy into electrical energy has reached a balance. Helium continuously brings the energy of the core to the turbine and converts it into electrical energy. A small amount is taken away by the heat dissipation device and enters the underground water tank.

After running stably for a few minutes, Wang Jiankun checked the power generation capacity and found it was 900KW, which means it can generate 900 degrees of electricity per hour. This indicator meets the design requirements.

Because the fuel balls filled at this time have an enrichment of 3%, the uranium elements that can participate in fission per unit time will definitely not reach an enrichment of 20%.

Wang Jiankun decided to let the reactor run in this state for 10 hours before shutting it down, and then produce fuel balls with an enrichment level of 20%.

The experiment was run for 10 hours because the current energy storage device can only store a maximum of 1 kWh of electricity. It could not be run any longer because the electricity generated could not be stored and would only be dissipated as heat, wasting precious helium and uranium 235.

Seeing that it was already 5 o'clock in the evening, Wang Jiankun came to the ground and looked at the sky. The sun was about to set and a sunset glow appeared on the horizon.

Thinking that I still had to keep an eye on the experiment at night, I couldn't do it without physical strength and energy, so I had to have a good dinner. So I rode my motorcycle to the newly renovated restaurant in front of the school.

This time when Wang Jiankun entered the room, he saw the class monitor Wu Xiaoyi was also there. He must have ordered the food and was waiting. He was drinking tea while flipping through his math paper.

Wang Jiankun walked up and said hello.

"Class monitor, you are so hardworking that you don't forget to study even when you are eating."

Wu Xiaoyi looked up and saw that it was Wang Jiankun. He smiled and said, "It's Jiankun. You're here to eat too? Have you ordered? If not, you can eat with me. Lao Liu, add two more dishes for me, one is shredded pork with fish sauce, and the other is dry pot spareribs. Hurry up!"

"Okay, I'll arrange it right away." The boss's reply came from the kitchen.

"Then you treat me to this meal, and I'll take care of the next one!"

"Why are you being so polite to me? I'm sorry for what happened before. I made you waste your time. Let's see if we can continue after some time."

"Okay, that's no problem for me."

"I haven't told you why you wanted to eat here. Give me a review."

"I passed by here the other day and saw that the store had been renovated. The owner also enthusiastically introduced that he had learned several new dishes, so I sat down and ordered a few dishes to try. I found that they were quite delicious, but the prices were much higher than before."

"That's right. I often ate here before but never saw you. The price of the dishes you mentioned is indeed a bit high, but there is no way to reduce it. Lao Liu spent a lot of money to hire a Sichuan chef and invested a lot of money in decorating and making the menu. In addition, the price of goods has risen a lot recently, so the unit price of the dishes has increased a bit this year."

"Oh, the monitor knows it so clearly."

"This restaurant is doing well, and Lao Liu is a good person, so I treat it as my second canteen. Jiankun, you can come here often in the future. If you mention my name, you can get a 8% discount."

"Oh, you also learned the word discount."

"I went to BJ during the winter break. There were a lot of shops there. I learned some of the words from them."

"BJ! My mother lived there when she was a child. I have always wanted to go there with my family, but I never had the chance. Can you tell me what BJ looks like?"

"Okay, the food is here, let's eat and talk."

In this way, the two of them ate and chatted. Wu Xiaoyi mainly talked about several famous attractions in BJ, such as the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, and the Temple of Heaven. He also talked about how he ran to Tiananmen Square in the early morning wearing a thick cotton jacket to watch the national flag raising.

He said that the temperature in BJ was more than 10 degrees below zero at night, but there were still a lot of people going to Tiananmen Square to watch the flag-raising ceremony.

Then he went on to talk about the scenes he saw in the market in BJ. There were many small restaurants and shops in the streets and alleys, and street vendors selling all kinds of goods. There was also a large market specially built for individual business owners that was under construction.

In general, individual economy has received strong support in BJ. Even for those small vendors who do not have business licenses, the management staff did not drive them away, but persuaded them to apply for individual business licenses. Those who have obtained the licenses can enjoy preferential treatment in the big markets in the future.

As for who the squad leader went to BJ with and what they were going to do, Wang Jiankun didn't ask since he didn't say anything, but he could probably guess it from his words.

I guess after a while, the suitcase project should be able to start, and the squad leader's father should have received good feedback, instead of just trying his best to maintain the previous achievements like before the New Year.

After dinner, Wang Jiankun said goodbye to his squad leader at the entrance of the hotel. He did not return to the underground base, but prepared to open the water inlet.

I came to the place where I ended last time and used my superpowers to quickly build an underground pipeline. Because there were only 4 miles left, it only took me more than half an hour to build the pipeline to the underground base.

Connect it to the inlet of the water tank, then turn on the switch of the water inlet pipe, and the water from Le'an River will flow rapidly into the water tank under atmospheric pressure.

An automatic control device was built on the water tank, which can automatically adjust the water inlet and outlet according to the water level and water temperature. At this time, it will take some time for the water to enter, and the reactor is still operating normally. Taking advantage of the night, Wang Jiankun continued to build the water outlet pipeline.

The front section of the water outlet pipe is a pressure pipe that leads from an underground water storage tank, rising to only about 5 meters from the ground, and then gradually deepens towards the riverside.

Wang Jiankun set the outlet near the middle pier of Dongmen Bridge, where the water depth is suitable, the geology and river channel are stable, and it is not easy to be buried by sand and rocks.

After completing the concealed construction of the water outlet in the dark, Wang Jiankun returned to the underground base.

I checked the temperature of the water tank and found that it had only risen by less than 1 degree Celsius, and the water level had reached more than 3800 cubic meters. It seems that using water to cool down is still the best way in the end.

We arrived at the fourth floor of the underground base, waiting for the reactor to operate at low power, and at the same time began to produce fuel balls with an abundance of 20%.

Last time, a total of 120 kilograms of uranium were brought back from the East China Sea, with an enrichment level of about 0.75%, including about 235 kilograms of uranium 0.9.

If the reaction can be completed in the reactor, it will be able to generate about 20 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity.

Of course, this power generation is a theoretical value. The power generation efficiency of other uranium fission reactors in the world is certainly not 100%, and when the abundance is lower than a certain value, the remaining nuclear fuel will be buried underground as nuclear waste.

Wang Jiankun has the superpower to continuously purify nuclear fuel balls that are below a certain abundance. According to the energy conversion efficiency of this reactor, it will eventually be able to generate about 18 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity. Of course, it will still need to extract some uranium as a supplement.

However, at present, this uranium is enough for Wang Jiankun to use, and even if the circular accelerator is produced and continuously operated, it can be used for a long time.

His current worry is that the electricity generated cannot be fully consumed, and there is not much point in increasing the energy storage system, so he has to prepare a high-power consumption project to consume the excess electricity.

At around 2 a.m., Wang Jiankun asked the system to execute the fault handling procedure, simulating a charging end failure, and the reactor automatically recovered the fuel balls into the fuel ball storage box at the bottom.

Without beryllium and graphite to slow down neutrons, the chain reaction cannot continue, and the fuel ball slowly returns from a red hot state to gray under the cooling of helium.

The helium also took away the heat from the core, and the graphite gradually returned to black.

When the temperature and pressure drop to a certain level, the turbine stops running. At this time, the temperature of the entire system is still more than 400 degrees Celsius.

Driven by an external power source, the helium continuously carries energy out of the core, and the cooling system is running at full capacity, bringing heat to the underground water tank.

Wang Jiankun went back to sleep only after the entire system returned to normal temperature.

The next day, Wang Jiankun did not go to school for morning reading. He slept until 7:, then went to the school gate to eat some cakes and went to class.

"Wang Jiankun, you didn't come to morning reading, so your class teacher asked you to go to his office after the first class to write a leave note." Yu Zirun said.

"Okay, I'll go there later. Is Teacher He not angry?"

"Probably not. He won't be angry with you. But you haven't been energetic in the mornings for the past few days. Can't you put the experiment on hold for a while?"

"It's almost finished. I won't have to stay up late in a few days. By the way, have you finished writing the patent documents and papers? If they are, I will send them overseas for application and submission."

"It's already healed. I'll show it to you to see if there's any improvement."

Wang Jiankun took the patent documents and English papers handed over by Yu Zirun and took a look at them. He found that the wording and sentence structure had been greatly improved, and several professional terms were translated very well.

So I complimented him, "Well! The sentences you wrote are much more professional. You put a lot of effort into it. I'll send it away."

"That's good. I thought you were going to spend some time revising it."

"You don't need to revise it this time. From now on, your word choice and sentence structure will be at this level. This kind of practical writing does not require good writing skills, as long as the sentences are smooth and the professional terms are accurate."

"Okay, I understand. But I'll check your professional vocabulary from now on. I don't really understand that."

"Okay, but don't forget to teach Fang Guihua and the others. In the future, these things should be written by the people who did it. After all, they understand the key points of the things they did better."

"Well, everything we write will be shown to the person in charge of this experiment, and they will copy it."

"Well, this is also good. You can write it by hand for the time being. After Lang Junjian finishes writing the box-pushing game, I will ask him to write a software specifically for writing professional papers and patent documents. It will contain many formulas, symbols, and software for drawing and making tables. This way, it will be easier for you to write and modify it."

"Ah? There is such software? That's great. It will be much easier to modify when writing. The one I gave you has been revised several times. Every time I revised it, I had to rewrite a new page, which wasted a lot of our time."

"But it may take until the summer vacation to be useful. After all, Lang Junjian doesn't have much time to write during class. You guys should try to overcome it."

"It's okay. They can't produce much during the school day. We are learning very quickly now. It's good to take some time to write and change our minds."

For the next five days, Wang Jiankun tested the 5-megawatt reactor every night, testing all possible faults to see whether the automatic control system and related components could complete the shutdown work as required.

Although this process consumes some uranium 235 and helium, the test must be carried out. In the future, the reactor will generally be in automatic operation, and it is necessary to be able to shut down safely in the event of a failure.

During the test, Wang Jiankun also consumed some electrical energy, and part of the consumed electrical energy turned into heat and was absorbed by the underground water storage tank. At this time, the water temperature of Le'an River was still very low. Wang Jiankun replaced part of the water gradually to ensure that the water storage tank remained at a low temperature.

On Saturday afternoon, Wang Jiankun took a leave and returned to the underground base to begin testing nuclear fuel balls with a uranium 235 enrichment of 20%.

The preparation work is the same as before. The prepared fuel balls are placed into the feed box, the operating program is started, and the reactor starts smoothly.

This time the heating process is faster because the density of uranium 235 has increased, so the chain reaction acceleration process is faster. When the system detects that the temperature has reached the predetermined value, it shuts down the neutron source. After the temperature rises to 1200 degrees Celsius, it starts the helium circulation and begins the energy conversion process.

After a period of time, the reactor core temperature reached more than 1840 degrees, the turbine air inlet temperature reached the preset value of 1400 degrees Celsius, the pressure was 20 standard atmospheres, and the power generation capacity reached 2700KW.

Based on this power generation capacity, more than 2700 kilowatt-hours of electricity can be generated per hour.

But there isn't that much demand for electricity right now, so Wang decided to see how economical it would be to run at lower power.

Therefore, the number of fuel balls in the core was manually adjusted, and only 120, or one third of the fuel balls, were retained in the core.

As the number of fuel balls increases, the core temperature begins to drop, and the final heated temperature of the helium is only 1200 degrees Celsius, and the final power generation capacity is 980KW.

After some extreme adjustments, Wang Jiankun reduced the number of fuel balls to only 60 and the power generation capacity to 400KW, which is basically the same power as the power-consuming equipment that the base is about to manufacture.

At this time, the first layer of the base, which is the layer closest to the ground, has been completely excavated. Most of the granite stones that had been stored there were pulled back to the Wangjia Production Team by his father, and those left at the base were also decomposed into various elemental substances by Wang Jiankun.

He plans to build a single crystal silicon rod production line here, test the performance of the equipment first, and then send most of the parts of the equipment to Xingyao Machinery in Hong Kong for production. A small part will still be provided by him, and then the equipment will be sold to Xingyao Electronics.

At this time, after several months of recruitment, with the information sent by Wang Jiankun and the necessary circuit boards for modification, Xingyao Machinery's scale and processing capabilities have been greatly improved.

Several veterans in the machinery industry who were hired at high prices are training the new immigrants. Because they are CNC machine tools, the training focuses on program writing, how to sharpen and install tools, and the training process is greatly accelerated.

Some of the modified machine tools have been sold to several machinery factories in Guangdong Province through the introduction of my uncle. According to the current feedback, customers are very satisfied. The price is right and only 50% of the payment is made in foreign exchange, so we have received a lot of orders so far.

However, there are currently a large number of second-hand machine tools in Europe, the United States and Japan that need to be disposed of. The supplier my uncle found has already started large-scale recycling, so there is no need to worry about the source of raw materials.

Wang Jiankun is also very good at manufacturing circuit boards, so it is easy for him to meet current demand. However, he cannot keep doing repetitive work and cannot waste this opportunity, so he must develop Xingyao Electronics' processing and production capabilities.

The production of silicon ingots and silicon wafers is a very important aspect. In the early stage, we will use the equipment provided by Wang Jiankun to obtain initial production capacity, and then we can recruit and train relevant talents and work towards larger size and higher purity.

(End of this chapter)