dear dumb,
I am aware of the statement made comical by Ed Asner:
“You can never put too much water in a reactor.”
I can see the public screams of the pipelines further back off the shore, but for a nation that made a separate reverent word for ‘tidal wave’, should have known better.
Yes. You can put too much water in a reactor depending on the cicumstances. Water is both a reflector and a moderator. Nuclear physics is amazing, and one of my favorite hobbies to study historically, culturally, politically, and for pure science. It’s interesting that there is still a lot we only can surmise from all the work that went on from 1938 until we made the right assumptions about how it will all probably work out until the build up Trinity in 1945.
I ref my found a great website that blogs an unbiased view of nuclear engineering, war, energy, criticality accidents, and all that came with it.
Have a look at nuclearsecrecy.com and click on “post archive” on the right hand sidebar for some very nice articles on the history of nuclear research.