For example,
Solar Energy gives electricity and heat. It powers swimming pools, homes, and other buildings. Solar energy is collected with solar panels and solar thermal boxes.
ALSO Does anyone know how it works?
Thanks!
More Pages:
- Solar Energy: Is It The Heat That Gives Energy To Solar Panels Or A Something Else? (7/16/2011)
- Solar Turbines: Why Should We Increase Nuclear Power Use When Geothermal And Solar Thermal Are Available? (4/20/2012)
- Solar Producer: Why Not Supporting The Nuclear Energy? (7/26/2011)
- Solar Turbines: Do U Think It Is Wrong To Use Nuclear Power Plant? (5/11/2012)
- Solar Energy: Solar Panels Convert _______ Energy To __________ Energy Which Can Be Used To Heat Water.? (12/29/2011)
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Peaceful activities:
Yes, this is how it works (simplified). Basically, nuclear power (radioactive decay of uranium) is just another conventional turbine. Water is super-heated, it turns to steam, the steam drives the turbine, which creates electricity, the water is returned to a condenser, where it cools, and is dumped back into the heating tank… starting the continuous process all over again. The only thing fancy and Atomic Age about it is that the water is heated by the fissile decay of Uranium-235, instead of firing it by oil or coal.
Uranium ore is mined for uranium oxide (UO2). It is enriched through various processes into large amounts of the isotope U-235 (which is 0.72% of mined uranium). The U-235 is formed into fuel rods and submerged in a large tank of water. The water’s density/chemistry and distance between rods regulates the nuclear reaction. When a U-235 molecule spontaneously decays, it emits kinetic energy, gamma radiation, and free neutrons. When one of these neutrons hits another U-235 molecule, it will cause that molecule to decays, and send off its own neutron… pretty soon, you have the entire fuel rod continuously fissile (decaying). All of this energy being released heats up the water through the enormous kinetic energy and somewhat from the gamma radiation. This is what heats the water and begins sending it through the system into superheated steam, etc.
This is also why fuel rods need to be replaced. There are only so many U-235 molecules to decay, and you reach a point where the fission process can no longer heat the water efficiently to maintain the closed-cycle system. So… people dump it somewhere, turn their backs, and pretend that the nuclear waste doesn’t exist.
That’s a terrible thing to do, but right now, that’s all that they do.
Making a bomb, simplified.
There is a critical mass chain-reaction, very simplified, is taking two separate pieces of fissile material (usually U-235, still, all these years later), highly enriching them (far beyond 80% of the isotope contained in one uranium oxide lump), then, when you want to make it detonate, you use an explosive charge to smash them together. This reaches critical mass, which is where everything is so closely packed that every molecule undergoes fission at once, releasing all of that thermal energy, gamma ray energy, and kinetic energy (and your beta particle). All of which destroy things and kill people. Interestingly, even in our modern bombs, the actual amount of U-235 that “blows up” in a bomb is only around 10% – 15% of the actual U-235 mass. The rest just becomes harmful fallout, and plays no part in the immediate explosion.
We primarily use fusion weapons now, but the fusion process is fired first by a fission process, because that’s the only force strong enough to cause the plutonium to fuse and detonate. Sometimes, there’s actually up to a three “pump” mechanism of fission-fusion that makes the bomb much larger than its reactive mass would indicate.