Nuclear power: Introduction

Koeberg Nuclear Power Station South Africa. Image credit melkbos.com

• Nuclear power production is similar to thermal power production in a number of ways.
• Both require a fuel to heat water and convert it to steam.
• However, in the case of nuclear power, the heat comes from radioactive substances such as uranium, plutonium and strontium.
• These are at times enriched in order to activate chain reactions.
• Pellets of the radioactive substances are placed in tubes.
• An electric current is introduced and radioactivity is accelerated with the result that massive amounts of heat are generated.
• This is the heat that boils the water converting it into steam and the steam, as in other thermal processes, is used to generate electricity.
• The structure where the fuel pellets or rods are placed is called a nuclear reactor.
• It is here where the atoms are separated or split (fissioning) or are bound together (fusioning).
• The processing generating so much energy that steel and concrete shells containing heavy water or deutrerium must be built to cool the whole reactor.
• This is to avoid it from melting down from the tremendous heat and a nuclear fall-out occurs.
• This was the case in the Chenobyl disaster in the Ukraine in 1986.

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