The successful idle debugging boosted Duke's confidence, which at least shows that the Bileme design has not many problems in monitoring and automation control. When the engineers check the entire equipment again and conduct a successful idle debugging, they can truly put nuclear fuel into actual operation.

Therefore, it takes several days to wait patiently for the real operation, but the nuclear fuel that invests the nuclear reaction and Duke's unique catalyst, slower, coolant and control rod are all ready to be completed. When the equipment is debugged here, you can actually feed the material.[]

After the idle debugging was successful, Duke refused to hold a celebration banquet. In his opinion, everything was just the beginning without waiting for the material to be put into operation to truly drive the power generation equipment.

Five days later, the critical moment comes.

"The monitoring system is started!" With Duke's order, Operator No. 1 in the main control room activated the monitoring system of the entire experimental reactor, opening up the first critical process of Duke's experimental reactor.

"Report, the monitoring system's self-inspection is normal!" Operator No. 1 reported, "Each detection point is in working state."

"The control system is detecting normally!"

"The transmission system detection is normal!"

"The recycling system is detecting normally!"

After a series of reports one after another, watching the giant screen show that everything is normal, Duke closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and slowly vomited out to suppress his excitement, and ordered in a deep voice: "Driven 1 unit of nuclear fuel!"

1 unit of nuclear fuel is the rigorous amount of the minimum output power of the experimental reactor of 10mw.

The nuclear fuel delivery operator of No. 7 pressed the delivery confirmation button. On the large screen, the automatic robot of the automatic transmission system took out the prepared unit of nuclear fuel from the warehouse and then sent it to the conveyor belt to pass into the core of the experimental reactor.

"Driven catalyst!" Seeing that the nuclear fuel was in place, Duke continued to order that this catalyst was Duke's exclusive invention and creation. Only Duke knew about the manufacturing process and formula now. This is Duke's core research result. According to the design requirements, within thirty minutes after the catalyst is put into use, the experimental reactor should enter a critical state.

Only when entering the critical state marks the official start-up and operation of the Duke nuclear reactor, laying a solid foundation for the unit to be connected to the grid to generate power and operate full power.

The large screen quickly showed that the catalyst was put on, and the countdown was about to begin, and time began to disappear minute by minute. Duke looked at the big screen nervously, staring at the critical reaction status display, and before he knew it, he felt a cold sweat in his palm.

The critical process of the experimental nuclear reactor is very similar to the ignition process of a conventional thermal power plant boiler. Only after entering the critical state, the nuclear reaction of the core enters the self-sustaining stage, that is, the real continuous nuclear reaction is initiated and the huge energy brought by nuclear fission is started, creating conditions for the unit's power generation and full power operation in the future.

Of course, after the first critical period, the power generation equipment will not be connected to directly generate power. Instead, a zero-power physical test will be conducted to verify the core performance, the availability of nuclear instrument monitoring system equipment and the correctness of core loading, so as to ensure that the unit can be upgraded to the power operation state.

Duke felt that the countdown time passed too slowly, just like an old lady couldn't take a step for a long time, making people live like a year. Ten minutes later, the detector that detected neutrons showed that the density of neutrons was gradually increasing, and the temperature in the reactor began to rise rapidly. Duke immediately felt that his heart began to rise to his throat.

These information shows that the fission of the medium nuclear has begun, because when the nucleus of uranium 235 is bombarded by foreign neutrons, one nucleus will absorb one neutron and split into two nuclei with smaller mass, and release 2-3 neutrons at the same time. The neutrons generated by this fission bombard the other uranium 235 nucleus, causing new fission. This continued progress is a chain reaction of fission.

The chain reaction will release huge energy in the form of thermal energy, and using appropriate materials to export these thermal energy, turning the peripheral water into water vapor, can push the steam turbine to generate electricity. This process is very simple, but it is not easy to do it.

First of all, we must ensure that this chain reaction lasts under the effective control of humans and is very difficult to control if it continues within a certain controllable range.

Because new neutrons will be released during the fission of atomic nucleus, it is very difficult to control them properly to ensure that these neutrons can continue to attack the nucleus and ensure that the nuclear fission reaction will not stop.

Only when the number of new neutrons generated by nuclear fission just meets the need for the reactor to continue fission, the entire nuclear reactor can be in a stable and continuous fission state, which is the so-called critical state.

If improper control leads to too many neutrons, the reactor will run unstable, and in severe cases there will be a risk of explosion; on the contrary, if the number of neutrons is too small, the fission reaction will stop.

Neutron detectors show that more and more neutrons are detected, and more nuclei of fission uranium 235 are also increasing. The temperature of the core reactor begins to climb to 800 degrees. At this time, the thermal conductivity system begins to work and begins to turn the imported seawater outside the thermal conductivity system into water vapor output.

When the countdown reached 28 minutes, a crisp reminder was heard, "The reactor entered a critical state!" At this time, everyone began to cheer.

This basically marks the start of the experimental nuclear reactor and the self-sustaining period begins!

In other words, from now on, this experimental stack can continue to run under the current conditions.

Although Duke was also very excited, he did not cheer with everyone. He stared at the air pressure intensity of the idling water vapor output.

According to Bileme's design instructions, the second-loop steam pressure that should be stable at this time is 25 megapas, and the reactor outlet temperature is 510~550c. But what Duke saw at this moment is far from this indicator, but like a conventional reactor, the second-loop steam pressure is 6-7mpa, and the steam temperature is 275-290c!

This means that the output power is much lower than the expected standards of Bileme design!

Time ticks passed again 10 minutes, and Duke saw that these two indicators had not increased significantly. The excitement in his heart gradually faded away as time passed, and then became colder and colder!

People who were still cheering in the main control room seemed to have discovered Duke's abnormal state. This is an experimental pile designed by Duke. It is normal for some indicators to be considered normal. Many people don't know. However, looking at Duke's increasingly silent face, and two indicators on the big screen that were always reminded of yellow, it quickly extinguished everyone's excitement.

"Dr. Duke, is the output power different from the design?" Sitting next to Duke was Zhu Yunqian, the chief expert of the gray-haired No. 10 project. He now asked calmly with the brief indicator description tables of Duke's experimental reactor.

"Yes, it's because of the insufficient output power." Duke's design parameters have been provided for everyone to review. Although they can't hide them from everyone at all, Duke doesn't want to hide them from anyone. "According to the current steam pressure and temperature, the parameters are reduced by at least about 5 times compared to the expected design."

For Duke, this is a very deadly thing, because it means that the experimental reactor that was originally expected to provide an efficiency of at least 20 times can now only increase by about 4-5 times. Although it is more efficient than the current mainstream nuclear reactor, it is far from reaching the level of replacement products.

To put it bluntly, in terms of efficiency, the Duke reactor can only be considered as the third and a half generation level at best, and it cannot rely on the edge of the fourth generation nuclear reactor at all.

"How could this happen? Why did Bileme's design have such a big deviation? Where did the problem appear?" A series of problems kept popping up from Duke's mind. Bileme's design and related simulation experiments, Duke did a simulation analysis on MIT's Titan II supercomputer, but there was basically no big problem.

But why is the intermediate effects so far different when it is developed into a practical heap?

Duke fell into deep thought and didn't even hear Professor Zhu Yunqian trying to greet him.

Seeing Duke's insanity, Zhu Yunqian knew the pain of a fanatical researcher in the situation of unsatisfactory experiments. "Dr. Duke, although the effect is not satisfactory now, it is possible to succeed at one time today, which means that your design is still very effective."

Zhu Yunqian comforted. "Now is the time to complete today's experimental process first. This problem of insufficient output power can be studied in detail through the recorded data."

"Victory and defeat are just commonplace in military affairs."

Duke came back to his senses in a daze and looked at Professor Zhu Yunqian with some embarrassment, "Thank you, Professor Zhu, for this specific reason, I will mobilize various data for a thorough analysis." Duke sincerely thanked him. Professor Zhu Yunqian's words temporarily freed him from the severe setbacks.

Now is not the time to cry. I have always been used to being smooth sailing. I can't even hold this little setback for a while. This is indeed a concrete manifestation of self-expansion to a new level.
Chapter completed!