control rod

1. 1.

   a steel or aluminum rod that can be moved up or down to control the rate of the nuclear reaction

   Broaderrod

   Part ofnuclear reactor

Questions about control rod

What does control rod mean?

control rod means "a steel or aluminum rod that can be moved up or down to control the rate of the nuclear reaction".

Is control rod a common word?

control rod is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.