Nuclear energy, Nuclear power plant, Fission nuclear plant, How nuclear energy is generated

 

Nuclear energy

Nuclear energy is the source of energy which is used to nuclear reaction to produce electricity.

Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay, and nuclear fusion reactions. Once the atoms are merged to make larger atom and energy is released in fusion like sun radiated energy.

Nuclear energy is the energy from splitting atoms like uranium, thorium in a nuclear reactor to heat water to produce steam that rotates the turbines and produce electric power.

 

Nuclear power plant:--

                               Nuclear power plant is the thermal power that harassed the thermal energy released from the nuclear fission that generates the electricity.

Fission nuclear plant:--

                                 A fission nuclear plant consists of the nuclear reactor in which the nuclear reaction generating heat take place. There is cooling system to removes the heat from the reactor. And steam turbine is used to transform steam into mechanical energy. And generator is used to transform the mechanical energy into electrical energy.

 

How nuclear energy is generated?

 

IN the process of the nuclear fission, the nucleus of the heavy atom like uranium, thorium, plutonium are used. When the nucleus of the heavy atom are bombarded with the low energy neutrons. In this process, atoms are split apart into lighter nuclei. When this is happened, a huge amount of energy is released if the mass of the original nucleus is just a little more than the sum of the masses of the individual products.

In nuclear power plant , such nuclear fuel can be aa part of the self -sustaining fission chain reaction that produce energy in a controlled rate. In nuclear reactor, there is a series of the machines that can control nuclear fissions. And it produces electricity.

In nuclear reactor, atoms of the uranium are forced to split apart. As they split , the atom release a tiny particles called fission products. And these fission products help other uranium atoms to split and then starting the chain reaction.  During this chain reaction, The energy released creates heat.

By using nuclear fission, the created heat warm the reactor cooling agent. Generally, colling agent is used as water. But some nuclear reactor uses liquid metal or molten salt. During nuclear fission, these cooling agent produce steam. These steam is used to rotate the turbines. And the turbine is connected to generator which is used to generates the electric power.

 

 

Advantage of nuclear energy:--

 

• Nuclear power plants produce renewable energy
• Nuclear power plant produce clean energy
• No pollution
• It can be built in urban or rural areas.

 

Disadvantage of nuclear energy:--

 

• Installation cost is too high                                            
• High risk of environmental contamination                     
• Limited availability of uranium makes large scale of the nuclear energy prohibitive.                                        
• Improper nuclear waste storage and disposal may cause environmental contamination.                               
• There is risk of accidental leakage of the nuclear radiation.

 

 

Location of the nuclear power reactors:--

1. Tarapur (Maharashtra)
2. Rana Pratap sagar (Rajasthan)
3. Kalpakkam (Tamil Nadu)
4. Narora (Uttar Pradesh)
5. Kakrapar (Gujrat)
6. Kaiga (Karnataka)

 

• These installed nuclear power pant have the capacity of less than 3 percent of the total electricity    generation capacity of the country.

 

 

• Mass energy relation is derived by Albert Einstien in 1905.                                                                        
• It is relationship between the mass and energy in a system.

Accoding the this principle, the difference in mass , m between the original nucleus and the product nuclei gets converted to energy E at a rate by the equation

 

E = mc²

 

Here , c is the speed of the light in vaccum

Energy is expressed in unit of electron volt (eV).

1eV = 1.602* 10⁻¹⁹ ­ joules

 

So, we can say that 1 atomic mass unit (u) is equivalent to the about 931 mega electron volts (MeV) of energy.

 

 

The source of energy depends on the following factors:--

 

The ease of the extracting  energy from the source         
The economics of the extracting energy from the       source                                                                                        

The efficiency of the technology available and the environmental damage that will be caused by the using source.