If nuclear power plants boil water to turn a turbine to make energy then why do they make more energy than a coal power plant that does the same?
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Because nuclear fuel has a lot of energy in it.
Let’s say you boil water using wood. Wood’s OK at burning, but it burns up quickly. You need a lot of wood to boil water.
If you had coal, coal’s better at burning. You need far less coal to boil the same amount of water.
And nuclear fuel has even more energy than coal. A Uranium rod doesn’t burn, it’s just a piece of metal that gets hot. And it stays hot for a very long time, relative to its size.
To go in depth, you’re comparing the energy stored in chemical bonds with the energy stored in nuclear bonds. When you burn coal you are breaking up chemical bonds. These are easy to form, easy to break, and don’t produce that much energy when broken.
But nuclear plants rely on nuclear fission. On breaking the much smaller bonds inside the atom itself. These bonds were formed inside dying stars. When they break, and with fission they slowly break apart naturally, they release a lot of energy.
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