Nuciliar energy

[Charles]

Hi,

can anybody tell me how nuciliar engergy works?

thx charles

 

ps. I'm only 14 years old and dutch so please don't give me all the dificult words

[YT2095]

Hmmm... ok... let me paint a picture here for you....

 

imagine a room full of loaded mouse traps, now imagine that each trap has a ping pong ball on it

 

all the traps are laid side by side and all loaded within a room.

you throw in ONE ping-pong ball, that will set one trap off on also trow your original ball some other direction... eventualy all the traps start to spring each other... like a chain reaction

now imagine these as being atoms instead of mouse traps, each radioctive atom contains energy (like a loaded mouse trap).

radioacitive elements will break down anyway over time (the trap rusts away and the spring fires) but actualy HITTING one with a particle from another nearby atom will make it happen in the exact same way as throwing your original ping-pong ball in

 

I hope this helps you a little

[Charles]

Yeah, thx.

 

But what do you have to refill (can't think of a better word), so like the fuel for a engine, the ..... for the nucilair energy

[iglak]

that wasn't really nuclear energy, that was a nuclear reaction.

 

i don't know exactly how it works, but in nuclear powerplants, nuclear rods are put into water, which quickly turns the water to steam, and that steam is used to turn a turbine. so basically, nuclear energy is a big steam engine that uses what YT2095 said, only a lot slower slower so that it doesn't explode.

[aman]

I think what you are asking concerns the energy that comes from atoms as they decay. All atoms have nuclear energy but some release it faster than others. Gold decays slowly and plutonium decays quickly. When plutonium decays quickly it releases many levels of energy, some of which can be contained to raise temperatures but also many more powerful levels of energy which can damage surrounding atoms by colliding. When plutonium decays it changes to a smaller atom or more stable element. It basically gets used up. Hope that helps.

Just aman

[swansont]

aman said in post #5 :

I think what you are asking concerns the energy that comes from atoms as they decay. All atoms have nuclear energy but some release it faster than others. Gold decays slowly and plutonium decays quickly. When plutonium decays quickly it releases many levels of energy, some of which can be contained to raise temperatures but also many more powerful levels of energy which can damage surrounding atoms by colliding. When plutonium decays it changes to a smaller atom or more stable element. It basically gets used up. Hope that helps.

Just aman

Sorry, but this is watered down to the point that it's wrong.

 

Things are either stable or they aren't, so I object to "more stable" - you can have degrees of instability, but not stability. Gold has stable isotopes - to say it "decays slowly" and imply that's why it's not used for fission is incorrect. Gold doesn't fission because that wouldn't tend to release energy.

 

Plutonium and Uranium fissioning often yield nuclei that are even more unstable (i.e. shorter half-lives) which is why nuclear waste is a problem.

 

On to an explanation for fission- Nuclei are made up of charged protons and neutral neutrons. There are two forces inside a nucleus: the electrostatic forces of repulsion between the protons and the nuclear force of attraction between all of these particles. The nuclear force wins, because it's stronger, but it only acts between particles that are close to each other. The repulsion acts between all of the protons. So there's energy stored (not unlike a spring that's compressed) when you have a lot of protons around - which happens in heavy nuclei like Uranium and Plutonium. Hitting them with a neutron can make them distort to the point that they can break apart and become two smaller nuclei - the nuclear attraction is about the same, but there's less energy tied up in the electrostatic repulsion. You also release a couple of neutrons, which means theis whole process can be sustained in a chain reaction, which was described earlier.

 

Other nuclear reactions release energy as well, such as alpha and beta decays. If you want explanations of these, just ask.