What is "subcritical"

Usage examples of "subcritical".

You wanna hear how I smelted the americium into two subcritical masses?

I recall, there have to be several subcritical masses of plutonium, or U-235, or whatever, blown together by shaped charges of explosive, all of which have to be fired simultaneously.

Design of tampers, design of the chemical-explosive charges to bring subcritical masses together, case-design, detonating mechanism, things like that.

They consisted of assembling two subcritical masses of fissionable enriched uranium.

The fission neutrons leak when subcritical, but when a reactor is critical, the number of fissions is constant since one reaction leads to another.

Simple chemical explosives would force the two subcritical masses together.

Somehow, that big subcritical nugget must have got back in, and the breeding-cans, which were pretty ripe by that time, must have been shoved in too close to it and to one another.

Once that protection was gone, no material substance in the universe could keep the half-ton of fissionable isotopes forming their cargoes at subcritical separation.

Two masses of U-235, which held at a short distance apart remain subcritical, when joined go supercritical, developing great heat and pressure.

Some factor of tree-of-life, or a subcritical dose of it, might trigger just enough of the change to do that for a hominid.

What if someone were to introduce a subcritical mass of U235 into the inside of the Tokamak?

No one could quite believe Dieter was so lost to self-control, yet his words hung in the supercharged air like a subcritical mass of plutonium, and they waited breathlessly for the explosion.

You wanna hear how I smelted the americium into two subcritical masses?

When they're set down on the counter tops, the platters achieve subcritical mass and begin to heat up!

Dr Curnow was sharing a joke with his companions - as well as a large bottle that he handled as delicately as a barely subcritical mass of plutonium.