Boom!

A random image of a nuclear power plant. Source: http://blog.panampost.com/wp-content/uploads/smiley-nuclear.jp

 

I have gone these past 18 years of my life thinking that anything that has to do with the word “nuclear” or “atomic” must be a bad thing. After learning about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, two atomic bombs that the United States dropped in Japan during World War II, anything “atomic” or “nuclear” could not be good for our world. As I learned more about nuclear physics, however, I discovered that nuclear fission, the process by which atomic bombs explode, actually has some good practical uses.

In recent years, the world has come to depend on nuclear reactions for fourteen percent of its electricity. If harnessed correctly, nuclear fission can be a great source of electrical power. At many power plants across the world, nuclear reactors split atoms in controlled nuclear fission reactions to generate power. Before we discuss how nuclear reactors control the reactions to generate electricity, we must answer an important question: what is nuclear fission? Put simply, nuclear fission, the splitting of an atom, occurs when neutrons are fired at a nucleus. Despite the strong force holding the nucleus together, neutrons are able to split it. When an atom splits, an extremely large amount of energy is released. The split parts of the atoms then crash into other nearby atoms, resulting in more nuclear fissions, a chain reaction so to speak. This is the same process which results in the large explosions present in atomic bombs.

If nuclear fission results in atomic bombs, surely power plants would not be able to handle such a process, right? Wrong. Nuclear reactors in power plants are able to control nuclear fission through numerous control measures. Control rods made of cadmium, hafnium, or boron, for example, are able to absorb neutrons so that they will not reach the atom in the first place. The nuclear reactor, thus, is able to control how many nuclear reactions take place and can prevent excessive chain reactions from happening, all while producing electrical power from nuclear reactions. Amazing, huh?