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Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced by nuclear fission of uranium and plutonium in nuclear power plants. Nuclear decay processes are used in niche applications such as radioisotope thermoelectric generators in some space probes such as Voyager 2. Generating electricity from fusion power remains the focus of international research.
Enriched uranium is a type of uranium in which the percent composition of uranium-235 has been increased through the process of isotope separation. Naturally occurring uranium is composed of three major isotopes: uranium-238, uranium-235, and uranium-234. 235U is the only nuclide existing in nature that is fissile with thermal neutrons.
Edward Teller was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb", although he did not care for the title, considering it to be in poor taste. Throughout his life, Teller was known both for his scientific ability and for his difficult interpersonal relations and volatile personality.
This timeline of nuclear fusion is an incomplete chronological summary of significant events in the study and use of nuclear fusion.
The Atomic Age, also known as the Atomic Era, is the period of history following the detonation of the first nuclear weapon, The Gadget at the Trinity test in New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, during World War II. Although nuclear chain reactions had been hypothesized in 1933 and the first artificial self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction had taken place in December 1942, the Trinity test and the ensuing bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended World War II represented the first large-scale use of nuclear technology and ushered in profound changes in sociopolitical thinking and the course of technological development.
Uranium-238 is the most common isotope of uranium found in nature, with a relative abundance of 99%. Unlike uranium-235, it is non-fissile, which means it cannot sustain a chain reaction in a thermal-neutron reactor. However, it is fissionable by fast neutrons, and is fertile, meaning it can be transmuted to fissile plutonium-239. 238U cannot support a chain reaction because inelastic scattering reduces neutron energy below the range where fast fission of one or more next-generation nuclei is probable. Doppler broadening of 238U's neutron absorption resonances, increasing absorption as fuel temperature increases, is also an essential negative feedback mechanism for reactor control.
In nuclear physics, an energy amplifier is a novel type of nuclear power reactor, a subcritical reactor, in which an energetic particle beam is used to stimulate a reaction, which in turn releases enough energy to power the particle accelerator and leave an energy profit for power generation. The concept has more recently been referred to as an accelerator-driven system (ADS) or accelerator-driven sub-critical reactor.
Project PACER, carried out at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in the mid-1970s, explored the possibility of a fusion power system that would involve exploding small hydrogen bombs —or, as stated in a later proposal, fission bombs—inside an underground cavity. Its proponents claimed that the system is the only fusion power system that could be demonstrated to work using existing technology. It would also require a continuous supply of nuclear explosives and contemporary economics studies demonstrated that these could not be produced at a competitive price compared to conventional energy sources.
The Soviet atomic bomb project was the classified research and development program that was authorized by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union to develop nuclear weapons during World War II.
Cooper Nuclear Station (CNS) is a boiling water reactor (BWR) type nuclear power plant located on a 1,251-acre (506 ha) site near Brownville, Nebraska between Missouri River mile markers 532.9 and 532.5, on Nebraska's border with Missouri. It is the largest single-unit electrical generator in Nebraska.
The Megatons to Megawatts Program, successfully completed in December 2013, is the popular name given to the program which is also called the United States-Russia Highly Enriched Uranium Purchase Agreement. The official name of the program is the "Agreement between the Government of the Russian Federation and the Government of the United States of America Concerning the Disposition of Highly-Enriched Uranium Extracted from Nuclear Weapons", dated February 18, 1993. Under this Agreement, Russia agreed to supply the United States with low-enriched uranium (LEU) obtained from high-enriched uranium (HEU) found to be in excess of Russian defense purposes. The United States agreed to purchase the low-enriched uranium fuel.
North Carolina State University in 1950 founded the first university-based reactor program and Nuclear Engineering curriculum in the United States. The program continues in the early 21st century. That year, NC State College administrators approved construction of a reactor and the establishment of a collegiate nuclear engineering program. The first research reactor was completed in 1953; it was scaled up in 1957 and 1960. It was deactivated in 1973 to make way for the PULSTAR reactor. The old reactor has been decommissioned.
Weapons-grade nuclear material is any fissionable nuclear material that is pure enough to make a nuclear weapon or has properties that make it particularly suitable for nuclear weapons use. Plutonium and uranium in grades normally used in nuclear weapons are the most common examples.
Nuclear safety is defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as "The achievement of proper operating conditions, prevention of accidents or mitigation of accident consequences, resulting in protection of workers, the public and the environment from undue radiation hazards". The IAEA defines nuclear security as "The prevention and detection of and response to, theft, sabotage, unauthorized access, illegal transfer or other malicious acts involving nuclear materials, other radioactive substances or their associated facilities".
Richard Lawrence Garwin is an American physicist, best known as the author of the first hydrogen bomb design.
The Clinch River Nuclear Site (CRNS) is a project site owned by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). It was once proposed as the Clinch River Breeder Reactor Project of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and the U.S. electric power industry to design and construct a sodium-cooled fast-neutron nuclear reactor. The project was opposed by President Carter.
Reactor-grade plutonium (RGPu) is the isotopic grade of plutonium that is found in spent nuclear fuel after the uranium-235 primary fuel that a nuclear power reactor uses has burnt up. The uranium-238 from which most of the plutonium isotopes derive by neutron capture is found along with the U-235 in the low enriched uranium fuel of civilian reactors.
Peak uranium is the point in time that the maximum global uranium production rate is reached. After that peak, according to Hubbert peak theory, the rate of production enters a terminal decline. While uranium is used in nuclear weapons, its primary use is for energy generation via nuclear fission of the uranium-235 isotope in a nuclear power reactor. Each kilogram of uranium-235 fissioned releases the energy equivalent of millions of times its mass in chemical reactants, as much energy as 2700 tons of coal, but uranium-235 accounts for only 0.7% of the mass of natural uranium. While Uranium-235 can be "bred" from 234
U, a natural decay product of 238
U present at 55 ppm in all natural uranium samples, Uranium-235 is ultimately a finite non-renewable resource. Due to the currently low price of uranium, the majority of commercial light water reactors operate on a "once through fuel cycle" which leaves virtually all the energy contained in the original 238
U - which makes up over 99% of natural uranium - unused. Nuclear reprocessing is a technology currently used at industrial scale in France, Russia and Japan, which can recover part of that energy by producing MOX fuel or Remix Fuel for use in conventional power generating light water reactors. However, at current uranium prices, this is widely deemed uneconomical if only the "input" side is considered.
The Catawba Nuclear Station is a nuclear power plant located on a 391-acre (158 ha) peninsula, called "Concord Peninsula", that reaches out into Lake Wylie, in York, South Carolina, USA. Catawba utilizes a pair of Westinghouse four-loop pressurized water reactors.
An accelerator-driven subcritical reactor (ADSR) is a nuclear reactor design formed by coupling a substantially subcritical nuclear reactor core with a high-energy proton or electron accelerator. It could use thorium as a fuel, which is more abundant than uranium.
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