A nuclear power plant uses uranium as their source of fuel. Uranium is an element that can be dug out of the ground in many places around the world. It is then processed into tiny pellets that are placed into very long rods that are put into the reactor.
The word fission like mentioned earlier means to split apart. Inside the reactor, the uranium atoms are split apart in a controlled chain reaction.
In a chain reaction, particles released by the splitting of the atom then go off and strike other uranium atoms therefore splitting those. Those particles given off keep splitting the other atoms as a part of their chain reaction. In nuclear power plants, special rods are used to keep the fission process regulated / make sure it doesn't go too fast. we have to make sure that this process is controlled because if it is not it would create an atomic bomb. But in atomic bombs,you need more specific things and a nuclear reactor does not have those. Another thing the reactors produce is radioactive material which has to be kept in its solid state to keep humans from becoming sick from it. The nuclear reactors need to be kept in a very strong concrete structure to keep it from getting out.
This chain reaction gives off energy in the form of heat. This energy is then used to boil water in the center of the reactor. So, instead of burning a coal or wood for energy / fuel, nuclear power plants use the chain reaction of atoms fission to change the energy in the original atoms into heat energy. The water then goes to another part of the plant to create steam. The steam then is turned into energy.
Below is a cross section of the inside of a typical nuclear power plant.
[All of the above including the picture is from (Aldrich B, 2006). ]
As we have heard before in criteria A there is another type of nuclear energy too caused by nuclear fusion which fuses the nuclei together to make a larger nucleus. The sun uses nuclear fusion of a pair hydrogen atoms and turns them into helium atoms. This gives off heat and light as well as other types radiation. One proton is usually left over / given off in the process another thing given off is energy. Now that scientists have learned how to make nuclear fusion happen their next big challenge is to try to keep it in a contained space to reduce the amount of radiation exposure to the workers in the plant.The thing that makes nuclear fusion better than fission is that it produces less waste than fission and also can last a lot longer. (Aldrich, 2006)
