How does a nuclear power plant generate electricity? Where does the radiation come from when there are failures?
In: Chemistry
Okay, so…imagine a big fire.
Now, imagine that we put a big tank of water above that fire so that the water heats up.
The water heats up enough for it to turn from water into steam. The steam flows up some pipes and spins some fans that we call turbines. The turbines spin really fast that generates electricity.
Once the steam passes through the turbines, it collects up in some higher pipes that pass through cooling areas, that drain off the heat and allow the steam to turn back into regular water. At which point, the water flows back down other pipes to rejoin the big tank at the bottom.
Now, this would be a terrible way of generating electricity, because you have to keep feeding fuel to the fire to keep the water hot enough to turn into steam. It’s incredibly inefficient in that it takes way too much effort to keep the fire hot. Too much fuel, too much work, too much smoke, etc etc etc.
But, what if you had a natural element that stays hot on its own? In fact, it’s so hot that you have to work to keep it cool by inserting really dense lead and other elements in there to soak up the heat.
You wouldn’t have to feed the fire to keep it hot. It stays hot on its own.
That’s basically what a nuclear reactor is. The fuel is incredibly hot because it’s slowly changing from one element into another and the changing process produces a whole lot of heat.
There’s a few different kinds of fuels that are used, some are better than others, but it’s basically a big ol’ nuclear fire heating water into steam that’s used to spin turbines that generate electricity.
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