The electric generator converts mechanical power supplied by the turbine into electrical power. Low-pole AC synchronous generators of high rated power are used. A cooling system removes heat from the reactor core and transports it to another area of the station, where the thermal energy can be harnessed to produce electricity or to do other useful work.
Typically the hot coolant is used as a heat source for a boiler, and the pressurized steam from that drives one or more steam turbine driven electrical generators. The valves are designed so that they can derive all of the supplied flow rates with little increase in pressure. In the case of the BWR, the steam is directed into the suppression chamber and condenses there. The chambers on a heat exchanger are connected to the intermediate cooling circuit. The main condenser is a large cross-flow shell and tube heat exchanger that takes wet vapor, a mixture of liquid water and steam at saturation conditions, from the turbine-generator exhaust and condenses it back into sub-cooled liquid water so it can be pumped back to the reactor by the condensate and feedwater pumps.
The cooling water typically come from a natural body of water such as a river or lake. Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station , located in the desert about 60 miles west of Phoenix, Arizona, is the only nuclear facility that does not use a natural body of water for cooling, instead it uses treated sewage from the greater Phoenix metropolitan area.
The water coming from the cooling body of water is either pumped back to the water source at a warmer temperature or returns to a cooling tower where it either cools for more uses or evaporates into water vapor that rises out the top of the tower. The feedwater pump has the task of taking the water from the condensate system, increasing the pressure and forcing it into either the steam generators—in the case of a pressurized water reactor—or directly into the reactor, for boiling water reactors.
Continuous power supply to the reactor is critical to ensure safe operation. Most nuclear stations require at least two distinct sources of offsite power for redundancy.
These are usually provided by multiple transformers that are sufficiently separated and can receive power from multiple transmission lines. In addition, in some nuclear stations, the turbine generator can power the station's loads while the station is online, without requiring external power.
This is achieved via station service transformers which tap power from the generator output before they reach the step-up transformer. Bruce Nuclear Generating Station , the largest nuclear power facility [13] The economics of nuclear power plants is a controversial subject, and multibillion-dollar investments ride on the choice of an energy source.
Nuclear power stations typically have high capital costs, but low direct fuel costs, with the costs of fuel extraction, processing, use and spent fuel storage internalized costs.
Therefore, comparison with other power generation methods is strongly dependent on assumptions about construction timescales and capital financing for nuclear stations. Cost estimates take into account station decommissioning and nuclear waste storage or recycling costs in the United States due to the Price Anderson Act.
With the prospect that all spent nuclear fuel could potentially be recycled by using future reactors, generation IV reactors are being designed to completely close the nuclear fuel cycle. However, up to now, there has not been any actual bulk recycling of waste from a NPP, and on-site temporary storage is still being used at almost all plant sites due to construction problems for deep geological repositories.
Only Finland has stable repository plans, therefore from a worldwide perspective, long-term waste storage costs are uncertain. Construction, or capital cost aside, measures to mitigate global warming such as a carbon tax or carbon emissions trading , increasingly favor the economics of nuclear power.
Some operational nuclear reactors release non-radioactive water vapor In Eastern Europe, a number of long-established projects are struggling to find finance, notably Belene in Bulgaria and the additional reactors at Cernavoda in Romania, and some potential backers have pulled out. To date all operating nuclear power stations were developed by state-owned or regulated utilities where many of the risks associated with construction costs, operating performance, fuel price, and other factors were borne by consumers rather than suppliers.
Safety and accidents[ edit ] Professor of sociology Charles Perrow states that multiple and unexpected failures are built into society's complex and tightly-coupled nuclear reactor systems. Such accidents are unavoidable and cannot be designed around. This leads to on average one serious accident happening every eight years worldwide. A nuclear power plant cannot explode like a nuclear weapon because the fuel for uranium reactors is not enriched enough, and nuclear weapons require precision explosives to force fuel into a small enough volume to go supercritical.
Most reactors require continuous temperature control to prevent a core meltdown , which has occurred on a few occasions through accident or natural disaster, releasing radiation and making the surrounding area uninhabitable. Plants must be defended against theft of nuclear material and attack by enemy military planes or missiles, or planes hijacked by terrorists. Proponents also believe that nuclear power is the only viable course to achieve energy independence for most Western countries.
They emphasize that the risks of storing waste are small and can be further reduced by using the latest technology in newer reactors, and the operational safety record in the Western world is excellent when compared to the other major kinds of power plants. Threats include health risks and environmental damage from uranium mining , processing and transport, the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation or sabotage, and the unsolved problem of radioactive nuclear waste. The hot water modifies the environmental conditions for marine flora and fauna.
They also contend that reactors themselves are enormously complex machines where many things can and do go wrong, and there have been many serious nuclear accidents. Actual construction costs often exceed estimates, and spent fuel management costs do not have a clear time limit.
Originally reprocessing was used solely to extract plutonium for producing nuclear weapons. With the commercialization of nuclear power , the reprocessed plutonium was recycled back into MOX nuclear fuel for thermal reactors. Finally, the breeder reactor can employ not only the recycled plutonium and uranium in spent fuel, but all the actinides , closing the nuclear fuel cycle and potentially multiplying the energy extracted from natural uranium by more than 60 times.
More prominently, we will be heavily damaged by carbon emissions from fossil fuels resulting in global warming. Obviously we need to solve this problem by moving to clean energy. The United States, along with many other countries around the world, are looking at nuclear energy as the possible solution.
But, despite many advancements and benefits, the usage of nuclear energy still has the power and chance to devastate civilizations around the world, and may not even solve the prevailing issue of carbon emissions A massive earthquake and tsunami triggered widespread and irrevocable damage to not only the Tohoku region and communities living there, but also to the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant ensuing the uncontrolled release of radiation into the environment.
Due to this nuclear catastrophe at the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant, many people have begun to question the plausibility of nuclear safety and the possibility of reliable government information Tightly crowded protons and neutrons make up the nucleus of the atom UCS, Hydrogen is the lightest element containing only one proton. Moreover, uranium is the weightiest natural element containing 92 protons UCS, Although the nucleus of an atom is contained with intense force it can be split apart when it is blasted with a neutron.
This is known as a process called fission UCS, The process harnesses the power of nuclear fission involving radioactive isotopes in order to produce a cleaner energy product that is far superior in efficiency compared to non-renewable sources.
However, with these inherent benefits come the risks of nuclear power, mainly stemming from radiation exposure and the threat of a facility malfunction. Nuclear reactors are located throughout the country and have the ability to supply major metropolitan areas with affordable energy on a massive scale What if this method not only outputted more energy than a mountain of coal, but it harnessed this energy utilizing the smallest forms of matter in the universe.
What if this machine could propel behemoths crafted from steel while simultaneously leaving behind less of an impact on the ecosystem than crude oil.
Nuclear reactors are located throughout the country and have the ability to supply major metropolitan areas with affordable energy on a massive scale Most do not know much about nuclear power due to the debate on if it is safe and even useful. It includes all clean-up of radioactivity and progressive demolition of the station. What is nuclear power. Cost estimates take into account station decommissioning and nuclear waste storage or recycling costs in the United States due to the Price Anderson Act.Gajar
Wind power can also be proven to produce confident energy; however there are many negative aspects to this type of production. Heat from nuclear fission is used to raise steam, which runs through turbines , which in turn powers the electrical generators. Nuclear weapon are far more destructive than common weapons, and they create radioactive pollution, which has a long term, serious consequence to the environment and ecology. Furthermore, common sense seems to dictate that nuclear power is a dangerous source of energy that kills our environment. They emphasize that the risks of storing waste are small and can be further reduced by using the latest technology in newer reactors, and the operational safety record in the Western world is excellent when compared to the other major kinds of power plants. Little did the citizens know that their lives were about to change.
Keshicage
So if a earthquake does happen this very second we will be ready for anything. This accident is the exact type of incident that often holds people back from an environmentally friendly energy source. The natural resources that we have now are still harmful to the earth however. Some countries reversed their phaseouts of nuclear power, some extended the lifetimes of existing reactors, and many developed plans for new ones.
Tole
The plant also has machines which remove heat from the reactor to operate a steam turbine and generator to make electricity. The gas which we use for our cars pollutes the air and considering the amount of cars the are driven each day, it is ripping apart the o-zone layer Moreover, uranium is the weightiest natural element containing 92 protons UCS, Many citizens may have some form of knowledge on nuclear energy, but are not well informed about it.
Faulkree
Nuclear energy is believed to be the best alternative future energy source to replace current energy sources such as fossil fuels. People use examples such as the nuclear power plant disasters of Fukushima and Chernobyl to deem how nuclear power is dangerous. Nuclear power plants are good for producing energy, but they do affect the environment
Shaktigami
This crisis includes the consumption of fossil fuels that leave the world free of pollution, while still creating the same amount of energy. Humanity is now on a collision course with the natural environment. Nuclear reactors are located throughout the country and have the ability to supply major metropolitan areas with affordable energy on a massive scale Over the next 50 years, unless patterns change dramatically, energy production and use will contribute to global warming through large scale greenhouse gas emissions — hundreds of billions of tons of carbon in the form of carbon dioxide
Nirr
McTaggart said that really stuck with me was that fissile isotopes like U give off more energy than is put into the system. This led to a partial meltdown of a nuclear power plant. The engine house with the steam turbine is usually structurally separated from the main reactor building.