The French science community is the first to take the lead in searching and discovering nuclear power, at the end of the 19th century the French engineer, physicist Antoine Henri Becquerel was studying the fluorescence of certain bodies.
The experiment was simple, Antoine Henri put a photographic plate wrapped with black paper and a uranium sulfates salt next to it, it should fluorescence (sunlight exposing should emit X- rays from t).
To put it in simple words, when Antoine Henri expose the uranium sulfates to sunlight it made it charged with light energy and have the ability to give the energy back in formes of electromagnetics waves in X-rays range.
On March 1, 1896, Antoine Henri understand that the blackening of the photographic plate occurred when the uranium sulfates weren’t exposed to sunlight, this was the reason why it didn’t fluorescence; the uranium compounds emit a specific ray by themselves called in that day “the uranium rays”.
The researchers never stop, in the next three years, Ernest Rutherford identifies three types of radiation called alpha, beta, and gamma, and since that day the researchers continue in the nuclear field to serve humanity and unfortunately make weapons.
Yesterday I faced a problem with the power here in Iraq, the power was off for almost eight hours, I couldn’t work on my website or do anything, in modern life we can’t live without 24 hours of power. because of the corruption we live in lack of power for thirty years, the U.S air force bombed our national power grid in the 1990s and since then we have unsolved power problems.
The Russian invasion and the oil price will cause an energy crisis, all of this made me think about nuclear power since we can’t go green that fast maybe we can combine nuclear and renewable power.
The main idea of nuclear reactors is that heat results from the chain of controlled reactions at control rates. Ths heat will use to turn the water into steam to run the turbines and produce electrical power.
United States use two types of nuclear reactors
Hold the main idea above, the United States uses a boiling-water reactor or a pressurized-water reactor to produce electricity.
Boiling-water nuclear reactors
In this type of reactor, the core heats the water to turn it into steam which uses to power the turbine and produce electricity.
Pressurized-water nuclear reactors
In this type of reactor, the reactor core also sources heat for the water, but it keeps it under pressure so the water can’t turn into steam, this hot radioactive water will flow in special tubes in the steam generator.
You probably wonder about the steam generator details; the steam generator is a massive cylinder filled with non-radioactive water, it contains thousands of tubes filled with hot water from the reactor core that will eventually get the water to a boil and turn it into steam.
In a close circle, the radioactive water flows back to the reactor core to get heat and return to the steam generator through tubes.
Nuclear Power Facts and Figures
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA data released in December 2019 insured that 450 nuclear power reactors are operating in the world with a total capacity of 398.9 GW(e) of power, the data also showed a 2.5 GW(e) increase in nuclear power since 2018 which I consider a good sign of reducing carbon dioxide results from the energy industry.
Nuclear power production contributed to 10% of the world’s energy production sources, it’s almost one-third of all low carbon electricity and was the second source of low Carbon after hydropower.
30 countries generated nuclear power in 2019 and 28 countries were planning to build nuclear power plants. countries like Bangladesh, Belarus, Turkey, and United Arab Emirates succeeded in building their first nuclear plants and soon will combine their power sources.
With these current events and the statistics above do you think your country should go for it? I honestly think it is a good idea for my country to consider nuclear power as a second source at least till we start to use renewable energy, I don’t think we will get zero emissions in our current political system but I’m sure nuclear power will solve our every power problem.
Today a reader，tomorrow a leader！