How it works – Nuclear power plants
17% of the world’s energy is provided by the nuclear power plants. Some countries have more dependency on nuclear power than others, for e.g. France has 75% of its energy in the form of nuclear energy as is said by the International Atomic Energy Agency. 15% of the power supplied to the United States is by this process only in which some states have more dependency than others. The world has in total around 400 nuclear power plants of which 100 are in United States alone.The way that the nuclear power is generated and how it is kept safe is what is explained in the subsequent lines.
Uranium
this is one of the common elements on the planet, which was incorporated into earth at the time when the planet was formed. The formation of Uranium is originally in stars. The stars when got old, they imploded, thus scattering massive amounts of dust everywhere, due to the heat and the cold, these massive dust clouds formed planets and this is how our plant was also formed. The half-life of Uranium-238 (U-238) is extremely long and is to the tune of 4.5 billion years, due to this it has still not disintegrated and is present in abundant quantities. U-238 makes up for at least 99% of all the Uranium present on the earth. U-235 is the kind that makes up about 0.7% of the uranium and U-234 which is formed by the decay of the U-238 is even rarer (Uranium-238 undergoes a lot of stages of alpha and beta decay which finally leads to the formation of a stable isotope of lead)
Uranium-235 decays naturally just as U-238 decays by alpha radiation this makes U-235 an ideal element for use in nuclear power production as well as nuclear bomb production. U-235 at a small percentage of time undergoes nuclear fission, it is also one of the very few elements that can undergo induced fission and can absorb a neutron and spit immediately without taking up enormous amounts of energy or hesitation. How Nuclear Radiation Works will give u complete details of the process.
