Today's nuclear power plants use the heat
from uranium fission reactions to do nothing more complicated than boil water, making pressurized steam that spins turbines to generate electricity.
Not exact matches
From the equivalence of mass and energy in relativity theory, together with theories about the
fission of heavy nuclei, it was predicted that if a certain mass of
uranium was brought together, an explosion would occur; surely all observers in the New Mexico desert on that day in 1943 could agree as to whether an explosion occurred.
But neutrons emitted
from the
fission of
uranium are fast.
It promises a large - scale energy source on Earth, based on fuel extracted
from water, and does not create the long - term waste that
uranium - based nuclear
fission does.
A nuclear reactor derives power
from the
fission of four different atomic nuclei:
uranium - 235,
uranium - 238, plutonium - 239, and plutonium - 241.
If that thought is not enough, consider this, the current
fission products
from the
uranium fuel cycle may be mitigated using some of the reactors that are capable of initiating the thorium fuel cycle.
If that thought is not enough, consider this, the current
fission products
from the
uranium fuel cycle may be mitigated using some of the reactors that are capable of initiating the thorium fuel cycle.
Raypierre makes the case very clear in the current Chicago Int» l Law J. that closed system combustion with oxygen can avoid much of the externalization of costs built into current plants; I imagine it can even contain the
uranium and thorium fallout
from coal (which is worse than that
from a properly operated
fission plant).
Uranium fission provides reliable heat
from reactions that are six orders of magnitude (powers of ten) more energy dense than the combustion reactions used to produce energy
from coal, oil and natural gas.
While nuclear energy is regarded as the lesser of the two evils when compared at an emission level to the burning of fossil - fuels, it may trump on the containment of the heat process, which burns in a contained nuclear reactor through an in - ward heat - chemical reaction called
fission, but nuclear energy production is a chain
from uranium mining to the toxic waste disposal and therefore as an entire process is an equally high risk environmental option.