Nuclear power plants provide about 17 percent of the world's electricity. Some countries depend more on nuclear power for electricity than others. In France, for instance, about 75 percent of the electricity is generated from nuclear power, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. In the United States, nuclear power supplies about 15 percent of the electricity overall, but some states get more power from nuclear plants than others. There are more than 400 nuclear power plants around the world, with more than 100 in the United States.
Have you ever wondered how a nuclear power plant works or how safe nuclear power is？ In this article, we will examine how a nuclear reactor and a power plant work.
Uranium
Uranium is a fairly common element on Earth, which was taken into the planet during the planet's formation. Uranium is originally formed in stars. Old stars exploded, and the dust from these shattered stars aggregated together to form. our planet. Uranium-238 (U-238) has an extremely long life (4.5 billion years), and therefore is still present in fairly large quantities. U-238 makes up 99 percent of the uranium on the planet. U-235 makes up about 0.7 percent of the remaining uranium found naturally, while U-234 is even rarer and is formed by the decay of U-238.
Nuclear Fission (裂变)
A nuclear fission happens when a uranium-235 nucleus with a neutron captures another neutron. The nucleus then splits into two lighter atoms and throws off two or three new neutrons (the number of ejected neutrons depends on how the U-235 atom happens to split). The two new atoms then produce gamma radiation as they settle into their new states. There are three things about this induced fission process that make it especially interesting:
The probability of a U-235 atom capturing a neutron as it passes by is fairly high. In a reactor working properly (known as the critical state) , one neutron ejected from each fission causes another fission to occur.
The process of capturing the neutron and splitting happens very quickly, on the order of picoseconds (1×1012seconds).
An incredible amount of energy is released, in the form. of heat and gamma radiation, when a single atom splits. The two atoms that result from the fission later release beta radiation and gamma radiation of their own as well. The energy released by a single fission comes from the fact that the fission products and the neutrons, together, weigh less than the original U-235 atom. The difference in weight is converted directly to energy at a rate governed by the equation E = mc2.
In order for these properties of U-235 to work, a sample of uranium must be enriched so that it contains 2 percent to 3 percent or more of uranium-235. Three-percent enrichment is sufficient for use in a civilian nuclear reactor used for power generation. Weapons-grade uranium is composed of 90-percent or more U-235.
Inside a Nuclear Power Plant
To build a nuclear reactor, what you need is some mildly enriched uranium. Typically, the uranium is formed into pellets (芯块) with approximately the same diameter as a coin and a length of an inch or so. The pellets are arranged into long rods, and the rods are collected together into bundles. The bundles are then typically submerged in water inside a pressure vessel. The water is used to lower the heat. In order for the reactor to work, the bundle, submerged in water, must be slightly supercritical. That means that, left to its own devices, the uranium would eventually overheat and melt.
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