In nuclear engineering, an assembly is prompt critical if for each nuclear fission event, one or more of the immediate or prompt neutrons released causes an additional fission event. This causes a rapid, exponential increase in the number of fission events. Prompt criticality is a special case of supercriticality.
Read more about Prompt Critical: Criticality, Critical Versus Prompt-critical, Nuclear Reactors, List of Accidental Prompt Critical Excursions, Nuclear Weapons
Famous quotes containing the words prompt and/or critical:
“You shall be as a father to my youth,
My voice shall sound as you do prompt mine ear,
And I will stoop and humble my intents
To your well-practiced wise directions.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The male has been persuaded to assume a certain onerous and disagreeable rôle with the promise of rewards—material and psychological. Women may in the first place even have put it into his head. BE A MAN! may have been, metaphorically, what Eve uttered at the critical moment in the Garden of Eden.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)