What is nuclear power? Is it safe and eco friendly? All I really know about it if from watching The Simpsons and hearing about chernobyl. But I somehow don’t think theres drums of glowing gloop laying around anywhere!
In: Technology
In short, some atoms are unstable and will break into two atoms, neutrons or protons, and release a lot of energy as heat during the process. Usually, that happens very slowly. Without outside influence, Uranium-235 (a common nuclear material) has a half-life of 703 million years, meaning in that time, half of it will degrade into smaller elements.
But, when you have a lot of it together, those stray neutrons will hit other unstable atoms and make them degrade, setting off a chain reaction, where one reaction creates one or more reactions. Nuclear power takes a bunch of unstable uranium and keeps it just barely at the point where one reaction creates another, which ends up releasing a lot of heat. That heat is sent to steam turbines to turn it into electricity.
But it has downsides; at best you’re left with nuclear waste that can’t really be used; it just needs to be stored for millions of years where it won’t kill people. At worst, if the reaction isn’t controlled, all the energy gets released at once, and the core melts down and can irradiate the area for miles around.
But on the up side, it creates a lot of power for a long time, and produces no carbon dioxide. It’s very clean if the nuclear waste is not released unintentionally
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