Eli5: How are Nuclear Weapons different from Nuclear Power Plants?
In: Physics
Nuclear weapons are designed to split as many atoms as possible in as short as time as possible. A lot of engineering goes into this since you have a very small window of time because the uranium that is being split can no longer react once it’s spread out by the explosion.
A nuclear power plant on the other hand is designed to maintain a very controllable and steady rate of reaction. It needs to split atoms fast enough to generate the needed energy but anything over that is wasted energy and unnecessary load on the cooling system. In the worst case an uncontrolled reaction could literally melt it’s way through the containment vessel and contaminate the environment with radiation.
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