Electricity from nuclear fission

In order to make electricity from nuclear fission, the fission reaction must be carefully controlled. To do that, the number of neutrons must also be kept under close control. Hafnium has the ability to absorb ( soak up ) neutrons very easily. It is used in rods that control how fast a fission reaction takes place. This property is one of the few ways in which hafnium differs from zirconium. Although hafnium is very good at... 

Cooling towers are used in many industrial areas to cool water to remove excess heat produced by fuel combustion or by other reactions. Nowhere is more cooling water used than in the production of electricity from nuclear fission. In virtually every cooling tower application, cool water is taken from a surface source (river, estuary, or lake) and is returned to its source heated up. The introduction of warmed water to its source disrupts marine plant and animal life and also catalyzes chemical reactions. These have the effect of increasing the concentrations of toxic chemicals in water, which is often taken up for drinking use downstream... 

A How is the process of producing electricity from nuclear fission different from the production of electricity from burning coal ... 

The energy from nuclear fission is released mainly as kinetic energy of the new, smaller nuclei and neutrons that are produced. This kinetic energy is essentially heat, which is used to boil water to generate steam that turns turbines to drive electrical generators. In a nuclear power plant, the electrical generation area is essentially the same as in a plant that burns fossil fuels to boil the water. 

Percentage of electricity generated from nuclear fission reactors in selected countries. 

Deriving electrical energy from nuclear fission produces almost no atmospheric pollutants, such as carbon dioxide, sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, heavy metals, and airborne particulates. Although not discussed in the text, there is also an abundant supply of fuel for nuclear fission reactors in the form of plutonium-239, which can be manufactured from uranium-238. Use the keyword Breeder Reactor on your Internet search engine to learn about how this is so. 

Although, at the end of the twentieth century, the accident at Chernobyl has made the use of fission reactors (eventually breeders) politically unacceptable, it must be recalled that our society can be run on electricity from nuclear reactors, with hydrogen as the storage medium and fuel for transportation. Fail-safe reactor schemes have been described in the literature. The eventual choice between nuclear energy and renewables will be one of cost. 

Hafnium has only a few applications. Probably its most important use is in nuclear power plants. A nuclear power plant is a facility where energy released from nuclear fission reactions is used to generate electricity. 

More than 100 nuclear power plants are now in operation in the United States, providing almost 20 percent of all the electricity used. Thirty-three states have nuclear plants. Some of these states, such as Vermont, get most of their electricity from nuclear power. Many more plants are operating in other countries. The country that gets the highest percentage of its electrical power from nuclear reactors is France. There, more than 70 percent of the electricity produced comes from nuclear fission reactors. 

Nuclear power is a major source of energy for electrical generation worldwide. Nuclear power plants are found in over 30 countries and generate about 17% of the world s electricity. France gets about 76% of its electricity from nuclear power, Japan gets about 33%, and tbe United States gets about 22%. Special Topic 18.1 A New Treatment for Brain Cancer describes another use for a fission reaction. 

Some major accidents at nuclear power plants, such as the leak of radioactivity from the Three-Mile Island facility in Pennsylvania in 1979 and the far more serious one from the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine in 1986, have resulted in high levels of mistrust and fear in many people. Yet, despite these problems, nuclear energy remains an important source of electricity. In the late 1990s, nearly every European country employed nuclear fission in power plants, and such plants provide the majority of electricity in Sweden and France. Today, the United States obtains about 20% of its electricity from nuclear power plants, and Canada slightly less. 

Section 20.11 Electrical Energy from Nuclear Fission... 

Heat from nuclear fission is used to generate electricity. 

A nuclear power plant generates electricity in a manner similar to a fossil fuel plant. The fundamental difference is the source of heat to create the steam that turns the turbine-generator. A fossil plant relies on the combustion of natural resources (coal, oil) to create steam. A nuclear reactor creates steam with the heat produced from a controlled chain reaction of nuclear fission (the splitting of atoms). 

Plutonium-239 is a fissile element, and vvill split into fragments when struck by a neutron in the nuclear reactor. This makes Pu-239 similar to U-235, able to produce heat and sustain a controlled nuclear reaction inside the nuclear reactor. Nuclear power plants derive over one-third of their power output from the fission of Pu-239. Most of the uranium inside nuclear fuel is U-238. Only a small fraction is the fissile U-235. Over the life cycle of the nuclear fuel, the U-238 changes into Pu-239, which continues to provide nuclear energy to generate electricity. 

Gadohnium is the 40th most abundant element on Earth and the sixth most abundant of the rare-earths found in the Earths crust (6.4 ppm). Like many other rare-earths, gadolinium is found in monazite river sand in India and Brazil and the beach sand of Florida as well as in bastnasite ores in southern California. Similar to other rare-earths, gadolinium is recovered from its minerals by the ion-exchange process. It is also produced by nuclear fission in atomic reactors designed to produce electricity. 

Nuclear fission energy for the commercial production of electricity has been with us since the 1950s. In the United States, about 20 percent of all electrical energy now originates from 103 nuclear fission reactors situated throughout the country. Other countries also depend on nuclear fission energy, as is shown in Figure 19.13. Worldwide, there are about 442 nuclear reactors in operation and 29 currently under construction. 

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