Intro Nuclear energy

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nuclear energy nuclear energy is the energy held in the nucleus of an atom it can be
obtained by two types of reactions 8ission and fusion nuclear 8ission produces energy
through the splitting of atoms which releases heat energy that can be harnessed to
produce electricity the fuel most commonly used for nuclear 8ission is uranium however
other elements such as plutonium and thorium can also be used all of today's operating
nuclear plants use nuclear 8ission to generate electricity the second type of nuclear
energy is nuclear fusion the same process that powers our Sun Fusion is a nuclear
reaction in which atomic nuclei collide at a high speed and join to form a new type of
atomic nucleus during this process matter is not conserved because some of the matter
of the fusing nuclei is converted to photons which produces energy fusion power offers
the prospect of an almost inexhaustible source of energy however creating the
conditions for nuclear fusion presents a potentially insurmountable scienti8ic and
engineering challenge a recent experiment has shown that nuclear fusion can be
achieved however it has not yet been successfully demonstrated on a commercial scale
today nuclear power plants account for 11 percent of global electricity generation with
about 80 percent of that installed capacity being in osed countries all of this capacity is
nuclear 8ission nuclear energy through 8ission can release 1 million times more energy
per atom than fossil fuels nuclear plants have large power generating capacity and low
operating costs making it ideal for base load generation because of its large-scale and
centralized nature it can easily be integrated into electricity grids requiring few changes
to existing infrastructure however upfront capital costs are intensive and present
8inancial risks to investors given the long time frames power plants must operate to
recover these costs nuclear energy does not emit greenhouse gas emissions for this
reason it is often seen as a substitute for fossil fuel electricity and a solution for
mitigating climate change however nuclear power holds a wide variety of
environmental and health issues the largest concern is the generation of radioactive
wastes such as uranium mill tailings spent reactor fuel and other radioactive wastes
some of these materials can remain radioactive and hazardous to human health in the
environment for thousands of years several nuclear accidents in recent history have
negatively impacted the environment and surrounding communities making nuclear
power a controversial topic for the general public that's nuclear energy [Music]

Lecture:

In this lecture, we're going to look at nuclear reac4ons, the basic mechanisms of nuclear
fission reac4ons, and the energy that comes out of that. So, a very brief bit of history here.
So, in the late 30s, 38 and 39, the physicists Hahn, Strassman, Meitner, and Frisch
discovered, while they were looking at uranium nuclei, that they did a remarkable thing,
which was when the nuclei were bombarded with neutrons, so you fire a bunch of neutrons
at these nuclei, the nuclei fission, so as they split into two fragments, at the same 4me, so
they split into two fragments and more neutrons were emiFed. Also, the fragments had a
certain amount of energy. So it's 160 mega electron volts of kine4c energy, which is divided
between the two. And so there was some energy, there was neutrons, and these heavy
nuclei were spliJng into two fragments. So we're not going to look in detail too much into
the specifics of nuclear physics, but I'm going to look at the reac4ons and kind of the general
outline of how they work. So, we're going to start with a nucleus of uranium 235. So that's
this here and then, I men4oned already, this uranium is being bombarded by neutrons. So,
uranium is the element 235, it means there's a total of 235 neutrons and protons in this
nucleus. Then, when a neutron interacts with it, it becomes uranium 236, which is an
unstable nucleus. So unstable means that it spontaneously turns into something else. In this
case, what happens is the unstable uranium 236 almost immediately breaks into two smaller
nuclei. So, these are, in this case barium and krypton. And so what I get is, I have uranium
235 to start with, the neutron uranium 236, then this fissions into barium and krypton, and
then what I have is gamma rays, which are high-energy light, and more neutrons. Let's look a
liFle more detail here. Now let's look at the results from this reac4on, so as I said, they're
gamma rays, two heavy nuclei, krypton and barium, and neutrons. So, first looking at the
gamma rays. So, these gamma rays, as I men4oned, are photons, or high-energy light, they
carry some energy with them and this needs to be accounted for in the design of the reactor.
So, this is not mostly how we're geJng the energy out of a reactor the useful energy
anyway, but we have these high-energy gamma rays, I don't want them coming out of my
reactor. So, it needs to have shielding to contain these high-energy gamma rays, or this high-
energy light, or high-energy photons. That's all saying the same thing. The next product from
this reac4on to consider are the neutrons. So I also have a number of neutrons coming out
of this process and so what I get is, I started remember with uranium 235, I needed a high
energy neutron to start this reac4on, and now what I have is all my products, the krypton,
the barium, the gamma rays, and then more neutrons, and so this causes a chain reac4on. If
I have more neutrons coming out, then those neutrons can be incident on other uranium
235 nuclei and caused this to happen again. So, this is how a chain reac4on works and this
chain reac4on has to be © 2 © May not be copied or duplicated without the permission of
the owner. regulated. In a nuclear reactor, there's neutron absorbers that if they're inserted
into the reac4on, they'll absorb the neutrons stopping this chain reac4on, if they come out
then the chain reac4on can grow, and if there's not enough neutron-absorbing material,
then this chain reac4on can grow out of hand. The final of these products I want to talk
about are the barium and krypton nuclei. This is actually where we're geJng our useful
energy that we used to produce electricity later in our nuclear reactor. And so about 85% of
the energy released in this reac4on is in the form of kine4c energy of the krypton and
barium nuclei. So, they're moving, they have kine4c energy; eventually, they come to rest
and they do this by colliding with other par4cles. What this does is it gives them kine4c
energy, so essen4ally what I'm doing is I'm taking their kine4c energy and giving that into
thermal energy of the par4cles, and so this thermal energy is what we use later for power
genera4on. Let's consider where this energy comes from. So, if I look at my ini4al thing, this
is the uranium 236, which fission into barium, krypton, gamma rays and three neutrons. So,
if I look at the mass of the uranium 236 and compare this with the masses of the barium
nucleus, the krypton nucleus, and these three neutrons, the gamma rays have no mass, so I
add up the mass of all these and compare it to the mass of my original uranium 236, what I
get is the uranium 236 has more mass than these final products. So, there's some missing
mass. Now, the missing mass is not very much, it's about that many kilograms. So a very,
very, very small amount. But we've all seen this famous E equals MC squared equa4on, we
talked about this a liFle bit when we first introduced energy, and what this tells me is that
mass can be converted directly into energy. So this is what's happening, this missing mass,
the mass that disappears, I can put here, mul4ply it by the speed of light squared and that's
the amount of energy which we get. So, I'm losing mass and conver4ng that mass into
energy. There's missing mass and turn into kine4c energy of these two, mostly has been
turned into the kine4c energy of these two products, and that is that 160 mega electron
volts of energy, what it's saying is that, if I lose this much, sorry, if I lose this much mass, it's
this many joules of energy, which is equivalent to the 160 mega electron volts of energy we
talked about, at the beginning. It seems like not very much, right? It's this many joules is
00000, however, many joules of energy, which doesn't seem like a lot. However, if we
compare it to chemical reac4ons, like if I were to burn fossil fuels, for example, then this is
actually about 100 million 4mes less energy per atom, then this nuclear energy. So, in fact,
nuclear energy, the E equals MC squared energy, is much, much more than the energy you
get when you break chemical bonds in a chemical reac4on. Here, we're going to follow the
energy flow in a power plant. So, what we start with is we have the nuclear energy, so we've
talked about that, and this is in the core of the reactor here, then that nuclear energy, so this
is E equals MC squared energy, as we men4oned, is turned into the kine4c energy of the
fragments, then those fragments stop and they transfer their energy into heat essen4ally,
into thermal energy. So, what I have is some thermal energy, essen4ally, this is hea4ng up
and then I have this heat exchanger. So I 3 © May not be copied or duplicated without the
permission of the owner. have this hot coil here from the core, and then I have some fluid
here that passes through, heats it up, and turns into steam, and so what I have is this hot
steam, that I've goFen the thermal energy from the reactor core here, then that steam fires
a turbine. So, it turns this turbine, so I have kine4c energy of the turbine, which then in turn,
turns an electric generator and gives me electrical energy. My flow is nuclear energy, to
kine4c energy of the fragments, to the thermal energy, to kine4c energy of the generator, to
electrical energy. So finally, I just want to talk a liFle bit about the resource itself. So,
uranium ore is found in the earth, it's mined, it's mostly in the form of an oxide u308, or
called yellowcake or yellowcake uranium. The deposits of uranium, or the known resources
are in order of how much there is in of the known resources Australia, Kazakhstan, and then
Canada and Russia about the same. So Australia has the most by a preFy sizable chunk,
about 29% of the world's total. Canada, Russia, both with about 9% of the world's total. Now
uranium is mined as I men4oned, but it's very dense in energy, like a small amount of
uranium has much, much more energy than the same amount of coal, for example, and so
the mining required and the drawbacks associated with mining are smaller because it's less
amount of mining per amount of energy. Nuclear energy is the only fundamentally new
source of energy in more than 100 years. So fossil fuels, wind, all of that stuff has been used
before but this is a new form of energy.