How Nuclear Energy Works

 I live within 15 miles of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, located on the beautiful Central California coastline near a little beach town called Avila.  A lot of controversy exists around this power plant which is scheduled to get shut down in 2025. What would happen if there was an earthquake—would people be safe? How does it compare to other sources of energy? 

Well, right now the Diablo Canyon power plant supplies California with 8% of the state’s energy. And currently, the United States gets 20% of its energy from nuclear power plants located throughout the nation, so it is clearly an important and widely used source of energy.  

 But what is nuclear power?

Think back to high school chemistry when you learned about little particles called atoms—made of even smaller particles called protons, neutrons and electrons. 

Some atoms are naturally unstable, which means they want to split in half into more stable atoms. One type of unstable atom is Uranium 235. Scientists figured out that when the nucleus of a uranium atom is hit with a neutron, it splits in half and energy is released in the form of heat. 

This fission (splitting) of a uranium atom also releases three more neutrons, which then go hit other uranium atoms and cause those to split and release energy. So suddenly, there is a chain reaction of uranium atoms splitting, sending neutrons off to hit other atoms, and ultimately a lot of energy (heat) being produced. 

In a nuclear reactor, there are entire rods of uranium that are used to create energy by splitting atoms and release heat. This heat is used to boil surrounding water which turns into steam. The steam turns a steam turbine and generates electricity. It’s pretty crazy when you think about turning on a light, where that energy may have come from…

Advantages and Disadvantages of nuclear power:

 If you want to watch a show that explains nuclear energy (and how things can go severely wrong when a meltdown happens) watch Chernobyl - the true story about the nuclear meltdown in Russia. Obviously ‘Hollywood-ized’ but it is an incredible (devastating) story and I thought it did a good job at explaining everything.

Cheers!
- AT

Here is the link to a video if you want a more detailed explanation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U6Nzcv9Vws&t=6s

 Sources: 

https://www.nei.org/fundamentals/how-a-nuclear-reactor-works
http://www.physics.org/article-questions.asp?id=71