Albert Tran
Nuclear power is energy that is produced as a result of a nuclear reaction, either one of two types, fission or fusion. The type that is used is fission because fusion is almost impossible to achieve due the conditions needed to have the reaction occur. One place where it is known that fusion can take place is the sun. When one thinks of nuclear power, they think radiation, however not all nuclear reactions emit radiation. The reason why all nuclear power is radioactive is due to the fact that radioactive elements, especially uranium, is used because of it is the easiest to produce a nuclear fission reaction because it is a large element and it is harder to split smaller elements such as oxygen or fluorine. Nuclear fission was discovered by a team of German researchers at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin on the eve of World War II.
In today’s day and age, nuclear power can be viewed as dangerous and unreliable, but it is the only source of baseload power of electricity. Baseload power is the amount of energy that is needed to meet year-round demands. Not only does nuclear power create a lot of energy to used, but it also does it reliably without emitting greenhouse gases, like fossil fuel factories. Because of this, nuclear energy has one of the lowest environmental impacts on land and natural resources of any electricity source (1). For example, by the year 2013, nuclear power plants have generated a total of 4,058,209,231 Megawatt-hours of energy, which
Anything a mother consumes will affect her baby’s health, either positively or negatively. After the sperm enters into the egg, instantly, the baby begins to grow inside of the placenta, which is inside of the mothers’ uterus. “The placenta has been described as a pancake-shaped organ that attaches to the inside of the uterus and is connected to the fetus by the umbilical cord.” As the placenta produces the hormones for the baby, it also supplies the blood to the fetus from the mother. The most important element that allows the fetus to grow is the umbilical cord. The umbilical cord is composed of three blood vessels that attach to the placenta and the fetus. All of these components help the baby’s growth, but the amniotic sac, which is composed of amniotic fluid, helps protect the fetus. The amniotic fluid helps the baby maintain a regular body temperature that
Nuclear power is achieved through fission; the splitting of an atom. Usually, the atom is uranium, the ninety-second element on the periodic table. One of the heavier elements, uranium is unstable and produces an extreme amount of energy when split (Reynoldson 5). Other elements like plutonium can also be used, but plutonium is very rare which results in the majority of nuclear
Nuclear power is harnessed from the energy retained inside of an atom’s nucleus. This energy bindes the atom together and, when released, can be used to produce electricity. In order for this energy to be released, however, it must be subjected to either nuclear fusion, the combination of several atoms to form one larger atom, or to nuclear fission, the division of larger atoms into several smaller atoms. Nuclear power plants, first introduced in 1954, use this second method in the production of electricity. Inside of a nuclear power plant, uranium atoms are split and their nuclear energy released, creating the heat necessary to produce the steam that powers turbine generators and create electricity. Nuclear energy is often referred to as a “clean” energy source because, unlike fossil fuels, its production does not result in the generation of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, methane, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides. Many endorse the use of nuclear energy because it is efficient, providing large amounts of energy in exchange for small amounts of fuel, reliable, as it can be produced almost all day and night, year round, and affordable, costing about 2.4 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2012 compared to fossil fuels, which cost about 3.27 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2012. However, the use of nuclear power also has several significant disadvantages. Its main downside lies in the threats nuclear power plants present in the forms of radioactive waste and nuclear meltdowns.
Inside out is a phenomenal children’s movie based on the human brain. This movie breaks down the human brain in layman’s term for children of all ages to understand. The movie is about a little girl who movies from the only town that she has ever known to a place where she cannot adjust. The main character in the movie is riley. Throughout the movie it showcases Riley’s emotion and reactions to the move that her parents decide to make. Although riley is the main character, the movie goes in depth of Riley’s brain as there are also five other main characters. The other main characters in the movie are Riley’s emotions. The five emotions are Joy, Anger, Disgust, Sadness, and Fear. As Riley’s mood changes her core memories are tainted. In order to keep riley from going down a path of destruction, each emotion must work together to get riley back on track.
Fossil fuels are criticized for contributing to the “global warming” theory, and the “greenhouse effect” blamed on unregulated industry, and transference pollution in our atmosphere. While energy preservation and education are important, it doesn’t solve the long-term problem: energy is needed and is increasing in demand as technology and our way of life advances. It is not possible to install a solar panel on every house, or a windmill on every hill. Fueling the future is a growing challenge for the world. At the current rate of consumption, fossil fuels will soon run out. Nuclear energy is clearly one of the best answers to our energy problems. Nuclear power system produce a tremendous amount of energy for their mass and are very safe when
The disastrous meltdowns that cause whole cities to become uninhabitable, as well as leaving families homeless and laborers without jobs, have defined the negative perspective of what people see in nuclear power. However, even after such catastrophes, the pure raw energy output makes nuclear power essential for the future of the human race. As time passes, the world’s energy usage has grown an increasingly massive size every year due to the consumption swell of energy. Despite nuclear plants being a heavily controversial topic internationally, its advantages are very well recognized and it’s causing nuclear plants to slowly become the basis of our growing society.
Nuclear power is composed with uranium ore that is extracted from a rock where uranium is made out of. Uranium is typically the most common element found, that it appears more often than silver and gold. Usually found in the earth’s crust , soil, rivers, rocks and even oceans. The use of uranium is to generate heat, produce nuclear weapon, armor plating and as a colorant for uranium glass. Anyways nuclear energy is use to create electricity, reactors and produce power plants. The way that nuclear produces electricity is the same process as every power plant, but before anything the nuclear energy must be released from the atom. This then goes into a nuclear fission that splits the atoms to than create energy.
Nuclear power is a very broad field that is compromised by many aspects of science including physics and chemistry. It was discovered in the early 1900s. It is a power source widely used by the United States due to the shear amount of energy that can be created from just two atoms. Nuclear fission, the most widely used form of nuclear power, creates incredible amounts energy incredibly efficiently and due to this it is actually really popular. Nuclear power is hailed to be eco-friendly but it is argued that the radioactive wastes and the constant potential for something to go wrong is too great a risk to the environment and people.
According to data from the Nuclear Energy Institute, nuclear energy accounted for 63.3% of emission-free electricity in the US while solar, wind and thermal energy collectively accounted for only 15.4% of emission-free electricity in the US. The operating capacity of solar and wind energy farms hinge on intermittent environmental conditions and thus, these methods are only able to attain an average capacity of 20-30%. This is in stark contrast to nuclear energy’s average capacity of 86%. 4 Opponents may point out that the processes used to build and fuel the nuclear energy plants will emit pollutants and greenhouse gases. However, studies have found that the life-cycle emissions of nuclear plants is comparable to the other forms of renewable energy.5
The world as we know today is dependent on energy. The options we have currently enable us to produce energy economically but at a cost to the environment. As fossil fuel source will be diminishing over time, other alternatives will be needed. An alternative that is presently utilized is nuclear energy. Nuclear energy is currently the most efficacious energy source. Every time the word ‘nuclear’ is mentioned, the first thought that people have is the devastating effects of nuclear energy. Granting it does come with its drawbacks; this form of energy emits far less pollution than conventional power plants. Even though certain disadvantages of nuclear energy are devastating, the advantages contain even greater rewards.
The process of nuclear energy is very confusing. It all starts at the earth's crust where the uranium is mined. Uranium is an nonrenewable resource. The uranium is taken to a power plant. Every nuclear power power plants uses fission. Fission is the process of splitting atoms into two. The difference between fission and fusion is that, fission splits atoms, and fusion combines atoms. Since all the power is stored in the nucleus of an atom, when the atoms split they release strong amounts of energy and heat. Although there
For the past 50 years, the United States has been using nuclear energy as one of it’s main non-renewable energy sources. The source of nuclear energy comes from nuclear power plants, which efficiently generates large quantities of energy and has low greenhouse gas emissions, compared to traditional coal power plants. Currently, there are 61 nuclear power plants operating in the U.S. and using nuclear power plants as a main energy source has always been a controversial problem within U.S. society. By the time nuclear power plants bring people convenience, they bring more disadvantages instead.
What exactly is nuclear energy? Nuclear energy is the energy held in the nucleus of an atom, it can be obtained by two types of reactions: Fission & Fusion. Fission produces energy through the splitting of atoms which produces heat energy, then it can be made to produce electricity. The fuel most commonly used for nuclear fission is uranium, all of today’s operating nuclear plants use nuclear fission to generate electricity. The second type of nuclear energy is nuclear fusion, the same process that powers the sun. Fusion is a nuclear reaction in which atomic nuclei collide at a high speed and join to create a new type of atomic nucleus; during this process, matter is not conserved because some of the matter of the fusing nuclei is converted
Due to this energy crisis, our society depends much too greatly on nuclear power for the greatest proportion of electrical power. The crisis is an extremely large and complex issue that deals with both socio-scientific and environmental issues. This generation and production of electrical power, known as nuclear power, uses a great deal of non-renewable fossil fuels to generate electrical power.
Nuclear energy has always been considered as one of the best options to replace petroleum and other non-renewable sources of energy since the scientific research begin on it more than half a century ago. With the passage of time, scientists came up with ideas and systems to utilize this energy practically for the benefit of the mankind so that it can be an alternate to the non-renewable sources of energy adding to that some other uses as well (eg. Nuclear medicine). This off course is an engineering task and as a matter of fact scientists do not consider it as their first choice of research. In the following sections, we will see what are the major barriers that the Nuclear energy professionals have to face in next 50 years.