Breeder Reactors: A Foreseeable Option?
Abstract:
Fission of nuclear particles has the potential to produce massive amounts of energy and electricity to help mankind. Breeder reactors bring forth modern technology at its finest; mankind is becoming more and more creative to make reactors which can be optimally efficient and cost-effective at the same time. By being able to harness plutonium-239 with a blanket of uranium and start chain reactions consistently, breeders seem to be a viable option to help produce electricity for a bigger population. However, maintenance and operation costs are big problems to deal with, and these are some of the ramifications that factors into the decision of realizing if breeders could potentially be our next alternative energy source.
Introduction:
Non-renewable resources such as fossil fuels have been used up by society on a daily basis and have forced the world to find a new, clean energy source. The rising price of oil and the constant emission of carbon dioxide are proof that in the future our lives will be much harder to live. One answer to this problem is nuclear power, which has shown its efficiency during the times of World War II but has not been used commercially due to the challenges of dealing with nuclear waste and proliferation. In today?s modern era, nuclear power has been used in liquid metal fast breeder reactors, reactors that use uranium-238 to produce plutonium-239.
Historical Background:
Nuclear energy was first achieved through Enrico Fermi?s experiment of nuclear fission where he and his team shot neutrons towards uranium atoms, which confirmed Albert Einstein?s theory of relativity that mass could be converted into energy. The first nuclear reactor was built by...
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Imagine working with radioactive materials in a secret camp, and the government not telling you that this material is harmful to your body. In the book Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters by Kate Brown, she takes her readers on a journey to expose what happened in the first two cities that started producing plutonium. Brown is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She has won a handful of prizes, such as the American Historical Association’s George Louis Beer Prize for the Best Book in International European History, and was also a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow. Brown wrote this book by looking through hundreds of archives and interviews with people, the evidence she found brought light to how this important history of the Cold War left a nuclear imprint on the world today.
According to Einstein’s equation, the physicists of the Manhattan project hypothesized that a minute mass can create a vast amount of energy.... ... middle of paper ... ... Works Cited The “German Nuclear Energy Project” Wikipedia.
Plutonium, which is a byproduct of the fission process, can also be used for manufacturing weapons and only requires 2-10kg to develop weapons. The atom bomb that landed in Nagasaki contained plutonium fuel. Depleted uranium, which is the left over from the enrichment process, is used to make military grade armor piercing bullets. These DU penetrators have been used in wars throughout history, the most recent being the Gulf wars. This is a disadvantage because the depleted uranium is toxic and has been scientifically proven to cause birth defects, cancer, and death where it was used.
Albert Einstein predicted that mass could be converted into energy early in the century and was confirmed experimentally by John D. Cockcroft and Ernest Walton in 1932. In 1939, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann discovered that neutrons striking the element uranium caused the atoms to split apart. Physicists found out that among the pieces of a split atom were newly produced neutrons. These might encounter other uranium nuclei, caused them to split, and start a chain reaction. If the chain reaction were limited to a moderate pace, a new source of energy could be the result. The chain reaction could release energy rapidly and with explosive force.
Enrico Fermi. Philanthropist and industrialist. In 1942, Fermi created the first self-sustaining nuclear power plant in an effort to provide clean energy for the world. Three years later in New Mexico, along with Einstein and many others, Fermi would design the plutonium fission bomb: a weapon intended to massacre millions at a time.
Central Idea: Nuclear energy only contributes a small amount to the world’s electricity yet it has hazards and dangers that far out-way its benefits. There are many other alternative power producing sources that can produce energy more efficiently and more safely than nuclear power plants can.
It was Italian-born physicist and Nobel winner Enrico Fermi, and his colleagues at the University of Chicago who were responsible for this success (“Nuclear”).
After the United States developed the atomic at the end of World War II, interest in nuclear technology increased exponentially. People soon realized that nuclear technology could be used for electricity, as another alternative to fossil fuels. Today, nuclear power has its place in the world, but there is still a lot of controversy over the use of nuclear energy. Things such as the containment of radiation and few nuclear power plant accidents have given nuclear power a bad image. However, nuclear power is a reliable source of energy because it has no carbon emissions, energy is available at any time, little fuel is needed for a lot of energy, and as time goes on, it is becoming safer and safer.
Nuclear power has grown to be a big percentage of the world’s energy. As of January 18, 2013 in 31 countries 437 nuclear power plant units with an installed electric net capacity of about 372 GW are in operation and 68 plants with an installed capacity of 65 GW are in 15 countries under construction. As of end 2011 the total electricity production since 1951 amounts to 69,760 billion kWh. The cumulative operating experience amounted to 15, 15,080 years by end of 2012. (European Nuclear Society) The change that nuclear power has brought to the world has led to benefits in today’s energy’s usage.
A. Attention Material: Have you ever thought about energy? Where it comes from and how it powers things? Nuclear energy is one of the many types of energy sources in the world today. It is a non-renewable resource such as coal and natural gas. The first nuclear reactor ever created by man was built in December of 1942. The discovery of building a nuclear power plant was discovered over 150 years ago (Nuclear Power: Villain or Victim?, p. 15).
One of the biggest and most prevalent problems is the need for clean, renewable, sustainable energy. On the forefront of these problems comes the following solutions: nuclear energy, hydro-electric energy, and photovoltaic energy. With the need for energy in today’s current world, exploring different ways of producing power is necessary. The differences and similarities between nuclear energy and alternative energy are important to look over and examine in depth, so that it is plain to see the positive and negative effects of energy production. To begin, nuclear power is produced by nuclear fission, which is the splitting of an atom to start a chain reaction (“11 Facts”).
A breeder reactor is defined as a reactor that both consumes and produces fissionable fuel. Generally breeder reactors produce more fuel than they consume. Breeding is the process by which new fissionable material is created by capturing neutrons from fissions in fertile materials.
Nuclear energy has is an overall success and continues to be because it is a reliable, efficient energy source that produces minimal pollution. Although it is a efficient energy source, it is also a massive destructive force that has been used in the past and can be used in the future if not properly defended against. America today can learn from instances in the 20th century such as the atomic bomb drops, exploration of fusion reactions, the knowledge gained from the three mile island accident, and from espionage. Nuclear technology is basically that manipulation of atoms in their current state. Usually radioactive elements such as high-grade plutonium or uranium are used in order to create a massive radioactive reaction that have the potential to obliterate any object in its way leaving a lasting negative effect on the environment. Nuclear energy was mainly researched for the atomic bomb droppings that occurred in 1945 as a result of Japanese oppression during World War II. The science of atomic manipulation, atomic radiation, nuclear fission and nuclear fusion was first developed in 1895. Research began to significantly speed up when the government took a large interest in the destructive force that nuclear weapons had the potential to hold. The only reason that the world ever had the experience of nuclear energy was because of World War II and oppression. Nuclear Energy came with a price of thousands of lives, that were not rightfully taken, but without those lives lost, our world would be different today, and we continue to learn from the mistakes and from the successes that we have had with nuclear technology.
Just like everything in this world, nuclear energy has both advantages as well as disadvantages. Some of the nuclear power disadvantages are: Radioactive Waste. The nuclear waste gives off radiation, radiation which can change the DNA in cells, which leads to il...
Nuclear energy is generated by a process called fission. Fission occurs within the reactor of a nuclear power plant when a neutron is fired at an atom of uranium causing it to split and release subsequent neutrons.1 These are able to crash into other uranium atoms causing a chain reaction and releasing a great deal of heat energy.