How Nuclear Reactors Work and How Nuclear Accidents Happen - And an Example of Press Bias Against Nuclear Power and Perspective

Uranium (Nuclear Minerals) / Nuclear Power - Economics, Design, & Industry

Date posted: 04/24/16

Bernie Hobbs provides a good example of such bias. He begins his article with the obvious ... All conventional power plants have the same end goal, to spin huge turbines that drive electricity generators. Then reminds us that like coal and gas-fired plants, nuclear power plants produce heat to make steam that drives the turbines. But instead of burning fossil fuels to boil water, nuclear plants use nuclear fission to split atoms, giving off extraordinary amounts of steam-producing heat. Nuclear fission involves splitting apart huge unstable atoms, usually of radioactive uranium 235, by hitting them with neutrons. As the atoms split, they give off energy and, importantly, more neutrons. It is those neutrons that hit other uranium atoms, causing a nuclear chain reaction. The same process happens in a nuclear bomb, but the fission chain reaction in a reactor is tightly controlled. Rods made of a dense material that absorbs neutrons (graphite) are 1nserted between the uranium fuel rods. Adjusting the position of these control rods speeds up or slows down the chain reaction. A cooling system transfers the heat away from the fission reactor to produce the turbine-driving steam, and to keep the fuel rods relatively cool. The catastrophic nuclear accidents at the Chernobyl power plant in 1986, and (here it comes) at Fukushima 25 years later, released radioactive material that caused loss of life, illness and contamination of land and water...(mixing Chernobyl and Fukushima). While they were triggered by different events, the disastrous outcomes in both cases resulted directly from a failure of the cooling system. In the case of Chernobyl, a combination of human error and a design flaw in the control rods caused an uncontrollable power surge that overheated the fuel rods in the reactor core. The Chernobyl disaster did kill many, but the Fukushima incident killed or radiated no one seriously and demonstrated that meltdowns could be safely controlled. Read on...