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.
Nuclear weapons are devices designed for **uncontrolled** releases of energy.
Nuclear power plants use nuclear material to produce heat in a very controlled fashion to release very modest amounts of energy/heat. The amount of heat produced is **controllable** and is used to boil water and create steam. That steam is used to turn turbines which creates electricity.
One uses the rapid fission of radioactive material to create a gigantic explosion.
The other uses the controlled fission of radioactive material to heat steam and turn a turbine to generate electricity.
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