Arises inside nuclear power plants, when the fuel splits into
other elements and gives off radiation. This process is
called fission. The process creates heat which creates hot
steam. The heat drives a turbine which makes
electricity.
While there are many elements that can undergo fission, nuclear
power stations use uranium as the primary fuel. It is loaded into
the reactor in long metals rods with just a fraction
(4-5 % ) of uranium inside..
Nuclear power stations have been making electric power for over
50 years. People now better understand their dangers
well so the risk of using them has lessened over time.
A scientist or nuclear engineer would say ‚the technology has
matured‘. All modern nuclear power plants have many safety features
and systems, most of them with several back-ups.
Nuclear stations have several advantages over conventional
ways of generating electricity: they can run at full
power for many months at a time. So they are very unlike the
so called renewables (solar and
wind power) which aren‘t always producing power. Nuclear stations also do not produce any greenhouse gases or others emissions.
There are still many problems with nuclear power that
cannot be easily solved. The biggest of these is the
radioactive waste they produce while they are operating. Even the
so called ‚spent fuel‘ contains a lot of radioactive
materials. There is no simple solution to this big issue: one way
is building large storage sites deep underground. This is expensive
and none have been built to date.
A better solution may be new types of reactors, which would
use up the dangerous waste from older nuclear plants. There are
several types of these and some of them have already been
tested in small scale or currently are being built .
Other new technologies are expected to make use of other nuclear
processes like fusion instead of fission (so basically, creating
bigger atoms instead of making big ones split apart). But these
will take some time to develope, probably a few
decades.