Nuclear power plants

by Chris Woodford
Atomic energy has had a mixed history in the half-century or so since the world's first commercial
nuclear power plant opened at Calder Hall (now Sellafield) in Cumbria, England in 1956. Huge
amounts of world energy have been produced from atoms ever since, but amid enormous
controversy. Some people believe nuclear power is a vital way to tackle climate change; others insist
it is dirty, dangerous, uneconomic, and unnecessary. Either way, it helps if you understand what
nuclear energy is and how it worksso let's forget the politics for a moment and take a closer look at
the science.
what is atomic energy?
It's not immediately obvious but tall buildings store energypotential energy. You have to work hard to
lift bricks and other building materials up off the ground into the right position and, as long as they
remain where you put them, they can store that energy indefinitely. But a tall, unstable building is
bound to collapse sooner or later and, when it does so, the materials from which it was built come
crashing back down to the ground, releasing their stored potential energy as heat, sound, and kinetic
energy (the bricks could fall on your head!).
Atoms (the building blocks of matter) are much the same. Some large atoms are very stable and quite
happy to stay as they are pretty much forever. But other atoms exist in unstable forms called
radioactive isotopes. They're the atomic equivalents of wobbly old buildings: sooner or later, they're
bound to fall apart, splitting into bits like a large building tumbling to the ground and releasing energy
on the way. When large atoms split into one or more smaller atoms, giving off other particles and
energy in the process, we call it nuclear fission. That's because the central part of the atom (the
nucleus) is what breaks up and fission is another word for splitting apart. Nuclear fission can happen
spontaneously, in which we case we call it radioactive decay (the conversion of unstable, radioactive
isotopes into stable atoms that aren't radioactive). It can also be made to happen on demandwhich
is how we get energy out of atoms in nuclear power plants. That type of fission is called a nuclear
reaction.
How much energy can one atom make?
E = mc2
If E is energy, m is mass (the scientific word for the ordinary stuff around us), and c is the speed of
light, Einstein's equation says that you can turn a tiny amount of mass into a huge amount of energy.
How come? Looking at the math, c is a really huge number (300,000,000) so c2 is even bigger:
90,000,000,000,000,000. That's how many joules (the standard measurement of energy) you'd get
from a kilogram of mass. In theory, if you could turn about seven billion hydrogen atoms completely to
energy, you'd get about one joule (that's about as much energy as a 10-watt lightbulb consumes in a
tenth of a second). Remember, though, these are just ballpark, guesstimate numbers. The only point

we really need to note is this: since there are billions and billions of atoms in even a tiny spec of
matter, it should be possible to make lots of energy from not very much at all. That's the basic idea
behind nuclear power.
In practice, nuclear power plants don't work by obliterating atoms completely; instead, they split very
large atoms into smaller, more tightly bound, more stable atoms. That releases energy in the process
energy we can harness. According to a basic rule of physics called the law of conservation of
energy, the energy released in a nuclear fission reaction is equal to the total mass of the original atom
(and all the energy holding it together) minus the total mass of the atoms it splits into (and all the
energy holding them together). For a more detailed explanation of why nuclear reactions release
energy, and how much they can release, see the article binding energy on Hyperphysics.
What's the difference between a nuclear power plant and a nuclear bomb?

In a nuclear bomb, the chain reaction isn't controlled, and that's what makes nuclear weapons so
terrifyingly destructive. The entire chain reaction happens in a fraction of a second, with one splitting
atom producing two, four, eight, sixteen, and so on, releasing a massive amount of energy in the blink
of an eye. In nuclear power plants, the chain reactions are very carefully controlled so they proceed at
a relatively slow rate, just enough to sustain themselves, releasing energy very steadily over a period
of many years or decades. There is no runaway, uncontrolled chain reaction in a nuclear power plant.
How does a nuclear power plant work?
Okay, we've figured how to get energy from an atom, but the energy we've got isn't that helpful: it's
just a huge amount of heat! How do we turn that into something much more useful, namely electricity?
A nuclear power plant works pretty much like a conventional power plant, but it produces heat energy
from atoms rather than by burning coal, oil, gas, or another fuel. The heat it produces is used to boil
water to make steam, which drives one or more giant steam turbines connected to generatorsand
those produce the electricity we're after. Here's how:
Diagram showing the sequence of power-making steps inside a nuclear electricity power plant.
First, uranium fuel is loaded up into the reactora giant concrete dome that's reinforced in case it
explodes. In the heart of the reactor (the core), atoms split apart and release heat energy, producing
neutrons and splitting other atoms in a carefully controlled nuclear reaction.
Control rods made of materials such as cadmium and boron can be raised or lowered into the reactor
to soak up neutrons and slow down or speed up the chain reaction.
Water is pumped through the reactor to collect the heat energy that the chain reaction produces. It
constantly flows around a closed loop linking the reactor with a heat exchanger.

Inside the heat exchanger, the water from the reactor gives up its energy to cooler water flowing in
another closed loop, turning it into steam. Using two unconnected loops of water and the heat
exchanger helps to keep water contaminated with radioactivity safely contained in one place and well
away from most of the equipment in the plant.
The steam from the heat exchanger is piped to a turbine. As the steam blows past the turbine's vanes,
they spin around at high speed.
The spinning turbine is connected to an electricity generator and makes that spin too.
The generator produces electricity that flows out to the power gridand to our homes, shops, offices,
and factories.
an a nuclear power plant explode like a nuclear bomb?

One reason many people oppose nuclear power is because they think nuclear plants are like
enormous nuclear bombs, just waiting to explode and wipe out civilization. It's true that nuclear plants
and nuclear bombs are both based on nuclear reactions in which atoms split apart, but that's
generally where the similarity begins and ends.

To start with, very different grades of uranium are used in power plants and nuclear bombs (some
bombs use plutonium, but that's another story). Bombs need extremely pure (enriched) uranium-235,
which is made by removing contaminants (notably another isotope of uranium, uranium-238) from
naturally occurring uranium. Unless the contaminants are removed, they stop a nuclear chain reaction
from occurring. Power plants can work with less purified, much more ordinary uranium providing they
add another substance called a moderator. The moderator, typically made of carbon or water,
effectively "converts" the less pure uranium so it will allow a chain reaction to happen. (I won't go into
the details here, but it works by slowing down neutrons so they are less readily absorbed by any
uranium-238 impurities and have a greater chance of causing fission in the all-important uranium235.) All we really need to know about the moderator is that it makes a chain reaction possible in
relatively impure uraniumand without it the reaction stops.
So what happens if the reaction inside a power plant starts to run out of control? If that happens, so
much energy is released that the reactor overheats and may even explodebut in a relatively small,
entirely conventional explosion, not an apocalyptic nuclear bomb. In that situation, the moderator
burns or melts, the reactor is destroyed, and the nuclear reaction stops; there is no runaway chain
reaction. The worst situation is called a meltdown: the reactor melts into a liquid, producing a hot,
radioactive glob that drops deep down into the ground, potentially contaminating water supplies

There are various other important differences that stop nuclear power plants from turning into nuclear
bombs. In particular, nuclear bombs have to be assembled in a very precise way and detonated so
that they implode (pushing the nuclear material together so it reacts properly). These conditions don't
occur in a nuclear power plant.
A different kind of power plant called a fast-breeder reactor works a different way, producing its own
plutonium fuel in a self-sustaining process. Its chain reaction is much closer to what happens in a
nuclear bomb and it doesn't work through a moderator. That's why a fast-breeder reactor could,
theoretically, run out of control and cause a nuclear explosion.