They explained how a power plant works in the Chernobyl mini-series. One part that got me thinking is how they use the energy from the fission to heat up that generate the steam which in turn run the turbin and give electricity (Correct me if i’m wrong).
What I don’t understand is why can’t the raw energy from the fission directly be used instead of going the whole cycle? What kind of energy is released from the fission and why can’t it be stored in a battery or capacitor-like thing?
In: Physics
Energy doesn’t exist on its own – energy is only ever a property of physical systems. This is similar to mass – there isn’t any abstract ‘mass’ floating around, mass is a property of particular physical objects. This is part of why the mass-energy equivalence isn’t as weird as it initially sounds.
So, the energy isn’t liberated in some abstract sense, it is transformed from one place in the system (mass) to another place (kinetic energy of products). Sometimes we can use kinetic energy to produce electricity more directly, by having it drive a magnet through a coil, but since the decay kinetic energy is randomly distributed it necessarily has the form of heat, and we have to build a heat engine. Turbines are, though seemingly outdated, a very effective heat engine.
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