State Exams 2012 Previous Year GK Questions with Answers

The correct answer is C, a mixture of water and steam. In a boiling water reactor, the design used at Tarapur, ordinary water is allowed to boil inside the reactor vessel itself, so the coolant leaving the core is a mixture of water and steam; the steam is separated at the top and driven straight to the turbine, without the separate steam generator that other designs need. Option A is wrong because carbon dioxide cools gas cooled reactors, not water reactors. Option B is wrong because pressurised water is the coolant of the pressurised water reactor, where the pressure is kept high precisely so that the water does not boil, which is the difference between the two designs. Option D is wrong because liquid metal, usually sodium, cools a fast breeder reactor. The single fact to carry into the hall is that boiling water reactors boil the water in the core and pressurised reactors do not.

The correct answer is A, Tarapur. The Tarapur Atomic Power Station in Maharashtra was commissioned in 1969 with American assistance and was the first nuclear power station in India as well as in Asia; its first two units are boiling water reactors, a design used nowhere else in the country. Option B is wrong because Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu is the newest of the large stations and uses Russian pressurised water reactors of the VVER type. Option C is wrong because Kaiga in Karnataka came much later and uses indigenous pressurised heavy water reactors. Option D is wrong because Rawatbhata in Rajasthan, built with Canadian collaboration, was the second station and is important for a different reason, being the first to use the pressurised heavy water reactor that India later built on its own. Remember Tarapur for the first station and Rawatbhata for the first heavy water reactor.

The correct answer is B, Paris. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization was founded in 1946 and works from Paris in France. It is the agency behind the World Heritage List, the international literacy programmes and the biosphere reserve network, and it also keeps the list of intangible cultural heritage on which Indian entries such as Kutiyattam and the Kumbh Mela appear.

Option A, New York, is the headquarters of the United Nations itself and of UNICEF and UNDP, not of UNESCO. Option C, Geneva, holds the World Health Organization, the International Labour Organization and the World Trade Organization, so it is the commonest trap in this question. Option D, Rome, is the city of the three food bodies, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Food Programme and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.