Suppose nuclear physicists discovered a fission process that always produced two smaller nuclei and only one neutron. Would this eliminate the danger of meltdown in a nuclear power plant? Why or Why not- ? Explain.
Running that process in a power plant would not only eliminate the danger of a core meltdown, it would also pretty much eliminate the possibility of getting any nuclear power out of the plant.
The understanding behind your question is correct . . . Neutrons coming out of one fission go on to get absorbed in other nuclei, and cause the other ones to fiss. BUT . . . NOT every free neutron whizzing around in the core material gets absorbed. Some of them enter another nucleus and immediately get spit out. And some of them never get near another nucleus at all. Of all the neutrons produced in one fission, only some percentage go on to stimulate another one. So if each fission produced only one neutron, then the whole process would completely run out of gas in some amount if time, as the number of free neutrons dwindled and shrank.
