Nuclear graphite

Nuclear graphite is any grade of graphite, usually synthetic graphite, manufactured for use as a moderator or reflector within a nuclear reactor. Graphite is an important material for the construction of both historical and modern nuclear reactors because of its extreme purity and ability to withstand extremely high temperatures.

Nuclear fission, the creation of a nuclear chain reaction in uranium, was discovered in 1939 following experiments by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman, and the interpretation of their results by physicists such as Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch. Shortly thereafter, word of the discovery spread throughout the international physics community.

In order for the fission process to chain react, the neutrons created by uranium fission must be slowed down by interacting with a neutron moderator (an element with a low atomic weight, that will "bounce", when hit by a neutron) before they will be captured by other uranium atoms. By late 1939, it was generally known that heavy water might be used as a moderator. The highest-purity graphite then commercially available (so called electro-graphite) was dismissed by the Germans and the British as a possible moderator because it contained boron and cadmium impurities. However, graphite of high enough purity was developed in the early 1940's in the United States, and this then was utilized in the first and subsequent nuclear reactors for the Manhattan Project.

In February 1940, using funds that were allocated partly as a result of the Einstein-Szilard letter to President Roosevelt, Leo Szilard purchased several tons of graphite from the Speer Carbon Company and from the National Carbon Company (the National Carbon Division of the Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation in Cleveland, Ohio) for use in Enrico Fermi's first fission experiments, the so-called exponential pile. Fermi writes that "The results of this experiment was [sic] somewhat discouraging" presumably because of the absorption of neutrons by some unknown impurity. So, in December 1940 Fermi and Szilard met with Herbert G. MacPherson and V. C. Hamister at National Carbon to discuss the possible existence of impurities in graphite. During this conversation it became clear that minute quantities of boron impurities were the source of the problem.

As a result of this meeting, over the next two years, MacPherson and Hamister developed thermal and gas extraction purification techniques at National Carbon for the production of boron-free graphite. The resulting product was designated AGOT Graphite ("Acheson Graphite Ordinary Temperature") by National Carbon, and it was "the first true nuclear grade graphite".

During this period, Fermi and Szilard purchased graphite from several manufacturers with various degrees of neutron absorption cross section: AGX graphite from National Carbon Company with 6.68 mb (millibarns) cross section, US graphite from United States Graphite Company with 6.38 mb cross section, Speer graphite from the Speer Carbon Company with 5.51 mb cross section, and when it became available, AGOT graphite from National Carbon, with 4.97 mb cross section. By November 1942 National Carbon had shipped 250 tons of AGOT graphite to the University of Chicago where it became the primary source of graphite to be used in the construction of Fermi's Chicago Pile-1, the first nuclear reactor to generate a sustained chain reaction (December 2, 1942). In early 1943 AGOT graphite was used to build the X-10 Graphite Reactor at Clinton Engineer Works in Tennessee and the first reactors at the Hanford Site in Washington, for the production of plutonium during and after World War II. The AGOT process and its later refinements became standard techniques in the manufacture of nuclear graphite.

The neutron cross section of graphite was investigated during the Second World War in Germany by Walter Bothe, P. Jensen, and Werner Heisenberg. The purest graphite available to them was a product from the Siemens Plania company, which exhibited a neutron absorption cross section of about 6.4 mb to 7.5 mb. Heisenberg therefore decided that graphite would be unsuitable as a moderator in a reactor design using natural uranium. Consequently, the German effort to create a chain reaction involved attempts to use heavy water, an expensive and scarce alternative, made all the more difficult to acquire as a consequence of the Norwegian heavy water sabotage by Norwegian and Allied forces. Writing as late as 1947, Heisenberg still did not understand that the only problem with graphite was the boron impurity.

After testing indigenous electro-graphite, Soviet scientists were able to procure and test American Acheson Graphite in 1943 and subsequently reproduced the technology.