Sentences with phrase «use uranium fission»

Like older models, they will use uranium fission to heat water and drive a turbine, but these reactors will be smaller, simpler to build, and each will add more than 1100 megawatts of capacity to the region's power grid when they come online in 2016 or 2017 — without emitting carbon dioxide.

Not exact matches

The nuclear power plants in use around the world today use fission, or the splitting of heavy atoms such as uranium, to release energy for electricity.

The reactor uses uranium dioxide fuel particles that are also coated with graphite so they will not crack and release fission products even in extreme heat.

The competing SFR design banks on a novel fission concept: bombarding uranium atoms with neutrons of much higher energy than those used in a traditional nuclear plant.

Most nuclear reactors use uranium fuel that has been «enriched» in uranium 235, an isotope of uranium that fissions readily.

All commonly used medical radioisotopes can be produced without using nuclear reactors or enriching uranium, or can be replaced with other isotopes that can be produced without a fission reaction, or by alternative technologies.

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.

Enriched uranium oxide is formed into rods and water is used both as a coolant, flowing through the reactor core to transfer heat away, and as a moderator, slowing down neutrons released by fission so that they promote further nuclear reactions.

LWR used nuclear fuel is composed of 95 % uranium, one percent transuranics, and four percent fission products.

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.

However, there are materials which could be used, such as thorium, that not only to mitigates the super long half - life of the products of fission but also provides a cheap alternative to uranium.

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.

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.

Nuclear power plants, however, heat the water using fission reactions, splitting atoms of uranium or plutonium and producing no carbon emissions.

So we have about 500 times more thorium available for use in fission reactors than uranium - 235.