Text 5. Energy Resources: Nuclear power
How it works
Nuclear power stations work in pretty much the same way as fossil fuel– burning stations, except that a "chain reaction" inside a nuclear reactor makes the heat instead.
The reactor uses Uranium rods as fuel, and the heat is generated by nuclear fission: neutrons smash into the nucleus of the uranium atoms, which split roughly in half and release energy in the form of heat.
Carbon dioxide gas or water is pumped through the reactor to take the heat away, this then heats water to make steam.
The steam drives turbines which drive generators.
Modern nuclear power stations use the same type of turbines and generators as conventional power stations.
In Britain, nuclear power stations are often built on the coast, and use sea water for cooling the steam ready to be pumped round again. This means that they don't have the huge "cooling towers" seen at other power stations.
The reactor is controlled with "control rods", made of boron, which absorb neutrons. When the rods are lowered into the reactor, they absorb more neutrons and the fission process slows down. To generate more power, the rods are raised and more neutrons can crash into uranium atoms.
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Natural uranium is only 0.7% "uranium – 235", which is the type of uranium that undergoes fission in this type of reactor.
The rest is U – 238, which just sits there getting in the way. Modern reactors use "enriched" uranium fuel, which has a higher proportion of U – 235.
The fuel arrives encased in metal tubes, which are lowered into the reactor whilst it's running, using a special crane sealed onto the top of the reactor.
With an AGR or Magnox station, carbon dioxide gas is blown through the reactor to carry the heat away. Carbon dioxide is chosen because it is a very good coolant, able to carry a great deal of heat energy. It also helps to reduce any fire risk in the reactor (it's around 600 degrees Celsius in there) and it doesn't turn into anything nasty (well, nothing long-lived and nasty) when it's bombarded with neutrons.
You have to be very careful about the materials you use to build reactors – some materials will turn into horrible things in that environment. If a piece of metal in the reactor pressure vessel turns brittle and snaps, you're probably in trouble – once the reactor has been built and started you can't go in there to fix anything.
Uranium itself isn't particularly radioactive, so when the fuel rods arrive at the power station they can be handled using thin plastic gloves. A rod can last for several years before it needs replacing.
It's when the "spent" fuel rods are taken out of the reactor that you need the full remote– control robot arms and Homer Simpson equipment.
Should I worry about nuclear power?
Nuclear power stations are not atomic bombs waiting to go off, and are not prone to "meltdowns".
There is a lot of U – 238 in there slowing things down – you need a high concentration of U – 235 to make a bomb.
If the reactor gets too hot, the control rods are lowered in and it cools down.
If that doesn't work, there are sets of emergency control rods that automatically drop in and shut the reactor down completely.
With reactors in the UK, the computers will shut the reactor down automatically if things get out of hand (unless engineers intervene within a set time). At Chernobyl, in Ukraine, they did not have such a sophisticated system, indeed they over-rode the automatic systems they did have. When they got it wrong, the reactor overheated, melted and the excessive pressure blew out the containment system before they could stop it. Then, with the coolant gone, there was a serious fire. Many people lost their lives trying to sort out the mess. A quick web search will tell you more about this, including companies who operate tours of the site.
If something does go wrong in a really big way, much of the world could be affected some radioactive dust (called "fallout") from the Chernobyl accident landed in the UK. That's travelled a long way.
With AGR reactors (the most common type in Britain) there are additional safety systems, such as flooding the reactor with nitrogen and/or water to absorb all the neutrons although the water option means that reactor can never be restarted.
So should I worry? I think the answer is "so long as things are being done properly, I don't need to worry too much. The bit that does worry me is the small amount of high-level nuclear waste from power stations. Although there's not much of it, it's very, very dangerous and we have no way to deal with it apart from bury it and wait for a few thousand years...
There are many different opinions about nuclear power, and it strikes me that most of the people who protest about it don't have any idea what they're talking about. But please make up your own mind, find out as much as you can, and if someone tries to get you to believe their opinion ask yourself "what's in it for them?"
When you hear the words "nuclear power", different images may flicker through your mind: concrete coolant towers emitting torrents of steam or a mushroom cloud rising high into the sky.
Some people praise the technology as a low-cost, low-emission alternative to fossil fuel, while others stress the negative impact of nuclear waste and accidents such as Three Mile island and Chernobyl. There's a lot of discussion out there about nuclear power's role in our lives, but what's going on at the heart of these power plants? As of July 2008, there were more than 430 operating nuclear power plants and, together, they provided about 15 percent of the world's electricity in 2007. Of these 31 countries, some depend more on nuclear power than others. For instance, in France about 77 percent of the country's electricity comes from nuclear power Lithuania comes in second, with an impressive 65 percent. In the United States, 104 nuclear power plants supply 20 percent of the electricity overall, with some states benefiting more than others.
Despite all the cosmic energy that the word "nuclear" invokes, power plants that depend on atomic energy don't operate that differently from a typical coal burning power plant. Both heat water into pressurized steam, which drives a turbine generator. The key difference between the two plants is the method of heating the water. While older plants burn fossil fuels, nuclear plants depend on the heat that occurs during nuclear fission, when one atom splits into two (source: www.naturalgaz.org).