In the movie *Shin Godzilla*, the humans came up with a blood coagulant and a plan to inject it into Godzilla in order to freeze him. It’s mentioned in the film that doing so would force him to perform a nuclear SCRAM since he’s fueled by an internal nuclear reactor. The coagulant works, shutting down his circulation (which is his cooling system), and causes him to freeze.
But what IS a nuclear SCRAM? i’ve looked it up before, but I just can’t seem to make heads or tails of it.
In: Physics
Its basically a way to stop the reactor. A reactor works based on neutron economy, a atom of fuel is split by a neutron, which releases more neutrons, some neutrons are lost, others go on to split other atoms of fuel, thus sustaining the reaction. The amount of neutrons in the system has to be stable for stable operation, if the quantity goes up, so does the power, if the quantity goes down, so does the power. Various things can be changed in the system, materials can be added or removed to the reactor which influence this neutron economy. SCRAM is a emergency procedure to stop the reactor this way. In the very first reactor in Chicago this was implemented by a man with an axe standing by the ropes that were pulling cadmium control rods out of the reactor, if there was need for emergency stop, he would have cut the ropes, the rods would have fallen in and absorbed neutrons fast, thus stopping the reactor.
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