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:
“How prompt we are to satisfy the hunger and thirst of our bodies; how slow to satisfy the hunger and thirst of our souls!”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“An art whose medium is language will always show a high degree of critical creativeness, for speech is itself a critique of life: it names, it characterizes, it passes judgment, in that it creates.”
—Thomas Mann (18751955)