How Does A Nuclear Power Plant Work?

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 intosomething 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, oranother fuel. The heat it produces is used to boil water to make steam, which drives one or more giant steam turbines connected to generators—and those produce the electricity we're after.


Here'show:

1. First, uranium fuel is loaded up into the reactor—a giant concrete dome that's reinforced in case it explodes. In the heart of the reactor (the core), atoms split apart and release heatenergy, producing neutrons and splitting other atoms in a chain reaction.
2. Control rods made of materials such as cadmium and boron can be raised or lowered into the reactor to soak up neutrons andslow down or speed up the chain reaction.
3. 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 reactorwith a heat exchanger.
4. 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 loopsof 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.
5. The steam from the heatexchanger is piped to a turbine. As the steam blows past the turbine's vanes, they spin around at high speed.
6. The spinning turbine is connected to an electricity generator and makes that spin too.7. The generator produces electricity that flows out to the power grid—and to our homes, shops, offices, and factories.

A nuclear reactor is a piece of scientific equipment which is designed to...