Death, Destroyer of Worlds

Wind and Water are useful and all, and it was quite useful to include a blog post about them, but to be quite perfectly honest, they bore me to tears.

Nuclear power is so much more elegant, don't you agree? Well, whether you're Monty Burns or a tree hugging hippie, nobody can really deny the fact that nuclear power just gets the job done, and thus it is the subject of tonight's blog entry.

Let's start with a history lesson. Ernest Rutherford first split the atom in 1919, but the awesome power of the atom was not really shown until World War Two, in a lovely city called Hiroshima. I hear they put out the fire sometime last week. Anyway, the moral of the story is that nuclear power has been developing ever since. In 1951, nuclear energy was first harnessed in a useful form to create electricity (not to say that decimating an entire city isn't useful in some cases, but that's irrelevant). Nuclear power seemed to be on the rise for most of the second half of the twentieth century, fueled by events like The Oil Crisis of 1973, but gradually, the public began to turn against it, out of fear of disasters like Three Mile Island and the Chernobyl Disaster. Fun Fact: parts of Chernobyl are still too radioactive to sustain human life. Makes you feel warm and fuzzy, eh? So yeah, the mildly vivid image of the video above occurring in one's backyard turned the public against nuclear power, and the industry was crippled for decades. However, nowadays, the public is turning against fossil fuels due to constant fear of global warming and carbon emissions, and nuclear power is starting to like an awful lot more attractive. At least to me. Regardless, most industry experts say that the nuclear industry is going to rise in the immediate future, as a demand for cleaner energy rises.

The following is the best explanation I can give for the process of harnessing radioactive material in order to create electricity. 99.99% of the nuclear reactors in the world work off the process of nuclear fission. First, you get what's known as a "fissile material," which is literally just a substance capable of performing fission, generally Uranium-235 or Plutonium-239. When a neutron is forced into the nucleus of a single atom of the fissile material, the atom splits, releasing two smaller atoms, energy, and more neutrons. Theoretically, these neutrons would go out and be absorbed by other atoms of the fissile material, thus causing the reaction to continue on, and increase in frequency exponentially. This is essentially what happens in the video at the top. when the rate of fission is not controlled, a massive explosion occurs. Now, as I already said, explosions are nice, but are not very useful for creating electricity that humans can use in daily life. Thus, neutron poisons are used in order to absorb some of the neutrons produced, allowing the reaction to occur at a slow, constant rate, or neutron moderators are used to slow the neutrons down. So, the reactor contains this reaction and allows it to proceed at a fairly constant and easily controlled rate. But...it gets really hot, really fast. However! the process by which the reactor is cooled is exactly the same process by which the electricity is produced. A coolant, typically just plain ol' water, is pumped to the reactor, where it is heated and generally evaporates, causing steam. The steam then proceeds out and spins a massive turbine (it's interesting how often these things seem to show up), thus creating electricity. The steam then leaves via a smokestack as perfectly harmless water vapor. Pretty simple, right?

Wrong. Whoever said rocket science is the epitome of a mentally-demanding occupation was a fool; sub-atomic physics is infinitely more complex. But just in case you thought that was easy, fission is only half the fun. Well...not half. 99.99%, but that last .01% is pretty darn important too. I am speaking, of course, of fusion. Nuclear fusion is becoming increasingly more important in the nuclear power industry, mostly because it theoretically can operate without all those negative aspects of fission power, such as massive barrels of glowing toxic ooze, and the occasional meltdown or two. So what is fusion? It's exactly what it sounds like, the opposite of fission: rather than splitting a really big atom into smaller ones, it takes smaller atoms and squishes them into a big one. The theory is that if you take one "light" atom and another "light" atom and push them close together, the "residual strong force" between their nuclei will pull them together, fusing them together into a single atom whose mass is slightly less than the sum of the two single atoms' masses. Now, I just used a lot of quote marks and italics, so I'll go over that a little better. A "light" atom is defined as "any atom that is less massive than Iron-56." That's pretty straight-forward. Now "residual strong force" is a tad more complex. Basically, there are four forces that govern the universe: gravity, electromagnetism, weak nuclear force, and strong nuclear force. The fourth one, also known as the residual strong force, is the strongest of the four, hundreds of times more powerful than electromagnetism, and millions more than gravity. Essentially, it is the force that holds the protons and neutrons together in the nucleus. In theory, if you get two nuclei close enough, this force would cause them to fuse together into a single nucleus. However, if you'll recall, I said "slightly less than the sum." If you're not following my math lingo, I just said that two plus two is three and a half. So what happened to the missing mass? There's an equation that many people know but few understand that tells us exactly that: E=mc². This equation states that the energy of a mass, simply from being mass is equal to that mass times the speed of light, in meters per second, squared. The missing "one-half" just turns into pure energy. Now, the mass of an atom is really really tiny. An atom of hydrogen is just about 1.6E-27 kilograms. Not all that impressive. However, that other part of the equation, c² is roughly 9E16 meters per second. So in the end, depending on the material used it generally evens out pretty well. Anyway, that's the super fantastic subatomic process that goes on, but in the end it turns out the same way, energy is released, the reactor is cooled, steam turns a turbine, ????, PROFIT, and repeat.

Now, if you're like me, your brain is probably hurting a bit right now. Let's watch a video of an adorable kitten until we feel better.

Okay, let's move on. Nuclear power supplies about 15% of the world's electricity, falling just behind hydroelectricity at 20%, and trailing steeply behind fossil fuels. However, it is starting to rise. While nuclear fission is technically not a renewable source of energy, as U-235 only accounts for 1% of the naturally-occurring Uranium on the planet, in terms of overall pollution and environmental impact, nuclear power is really cleaner and greener than fossil fuels, and is one of the few forms of energy that is actually more efficient than oil. New research and technology is being developed right now that aims to make nuclear power more effective, less wasteful, and all around safer for humankind to use. Furthermore, the recent developments in the field of fusion energy could change the face of the world's energy forever. Fusion can be performed with naturally occurring hydrogen, the most abundant substance in the universe, and produces little, if any, nuclear waste. In my opinion, I think in the next years, possibly the next decade, we could see huge advancements in nuclear power that will change how humans live all across the planet.