It depends on the kind of reactor you consider. In a CANDU heavy water reactor, the nuclear fuel can be replaced on-the-fly. This is a big advantage that the CANDU’s have over the light water nuclear reactor designs which in my opinion are very poor.
On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 6:09 PM, Jed Rothwell <[email protected]> wrote: > Axil Axil wrote: > > System modularity is a very old and accepted way to configure a system. > Power reactors must be highly reliable and modularity is how you do it. > > > On the other hand, you do not remove and replace one fire tube or one > fission reactor rod at a time, without turning off the whole machine! You do > not swap out the landing gear or a turbine blade in a airplane in flight, > although as someone remarked, that is more-or-less what they try to do in > nuclear power plants, because it is so expensive to turn them off. > > - Jed > >
