How does a Nuclear Center work?

If you have ever wondered what a nuclear power plant is like, how it works and the characteristics, you have come to the right place, since we are going to explain it to you right now.

More or less we all know that part of the electricity we have in our homes comes from nuclear power plants, although we do not understand exactly what they are and how they work.

What we know is that the environmental groups have declared war on this type of plant, because, as they themselves state, they are dangerous for the environment and for human beings themselves.

We also know the catastrophic consequences of an accident in a plant, as we can live in Chernobyl on April 26, 1986, when the Vladimir Ilich Lenin nuclear power plant, located in the north of Ukraine, had a major setback, causing the worst accident core of history.

The explosions blew off the lid of the 1,200-tonne reactor 4 and ejected large amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere, forming a radioactive cloud that spread over 162,000 square kilometers and encompassed Europe and North America.

The truth is that nuclear power plants are still in force throughout the world, continuing to operate in more than 400 plants around the world, providing electricity to millions of people.

What’s a nuclear center?

A nuclear power plant is an industrial facility that generates electricity from nuclear power.

They are included within the thermoelectric plantswhich means that they use the heat, coming from the fission of materials such as uranium and plutonium, to generate electrical energy.

How do they work?

The operation is based on what is the use of heat to move a turbine by the action of water vapor (uranium or plutonium fuel), which, when connected to an electric generator, produces that very thing, electricity.

It could be said that this whole process is divided into different phases:

• The first thing is to create the uranium fission inside the nuclear reactor itself.
• This will release a Large amount of energy It heats the water until it evaporates.
• The steam is transported to the turbine assembly.
• The turbine blades rotate by the action of the steam, which also causes the generator to start working.
• The movement of the generator transforms the mechanical energy into electrical energy like the one we normally use.
• When the water vapor has passed through the turbine, send to a condensater where it cools and becomes liquid.

Types of plants

Although the purpose of nuclear power plants is the same, they do not all work in the same way.

The differences between the reactors are as follows:

• light water reactors: this is also divided into those of pressurized water (PWR) or those of boiling water. For the first type, the fuel used is slightly enriched uranium and is usually found in France, the United States and Japan. In the second case, the fuel uses cooling water and usually occurs in several power plants in the United States.
• heavy water reactor: is one that uses natural uranium with heavy water as a moderator. It usually occurs in Canada.
• Natural uranium, gas and graphite reactor: The fuel is natural uranium in metallic form as fuel, with nuclear power plants in Great Britain and France as examples.
• advanced gas reactor: They use slightly enriched uranium oxide and stainless steel tubes as fuel.
• graphite light water reactor: It is a type of central that only occurred in the Soviet model. in which uranium was used as fuel, graphite as moderator and water as coolant.

nuclear power plant elements

Several elements are involved in a nuclear reactor, which is why it is capable of managing the entire fission chain system.

It is also capable of using it for the extraction of the generated heat. These elements are:

• Fuel: it is a material formed from uranium, without which there would be no fission reactions, so we speak of a source of heat generation.
• Moderator: it decreases the speed of neutrons and water, helium or graphite, among other materials, are usually used.
• Refrigerant: is responsible for extracting the heat generated by the fuel. Light water, heavy water or helium, among others, are usually used as coolants.
• control elements: The neutron population will be well controlled and stable.
• Armor: avoids any type of partial or total leak from the reactor. Suede be constructed of lead, steel, or concrete.
• Security elements: are those elements that will prevent any type of leak from the interior.

how is generated the electricity?

At the moment in which the steam drives the turbine, the thermal energy is passed to it, making it have enough power to rotate.

If we start from the fact that it is cloudy, that it is spinning with mechanical energyis connected to an electric generator, we assume that said generator is going to transform said energy into electricity.

now it must lower the temperature of water vapor coming out of the turbine, which has lost heat energy. For that, it must be refrigerated before reinserting it into the circuit.

That’s why he goes to a condensation tankwhere it will be in contact with the water from the outside pipes, causing it to go to liquid state. Then, by means of a water pump, it is directed back to the reactor and the cycle repeats.

This is how we have electricity thanks to a nuclear power plant, 14% of the world’s electricity to be exact

The white smoke that comes out of the chimneys of a nuclear power plant, in case you were wondering, is nothing more than water vapor.

When the cold water comes into thermal contact with the steam from the turbines, it heats up very quickly. This heat causes some of the external water to turn into steam. For this reason, nuclear power plants are always close to places with cold water (the sea, a river or a lake) to cool the deposit and, therefore, white always comes out of the chimneys.

We hope that everything that has to do with nuclear power plants, what they are like, how they work, the types, how they give light, etc. It has become clearer to you with everything we have told in this article.