Resoures needed Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Resoures needed - Essay Example The energy released is usually in heat form. After heat is emitted, the coolant lifts it out of the reactor. Coolant used in most instances is plain water. After the coolant has heated up, it proceeds to the turbine chamber where it drives a shaft. This makes nuclear reactors be exotic heat sources (Hargraves 45). The reactor core The reactor core generates heat and stores all nuclear fuel. It has uranium (low enriched, not less than 5% U-235). The coolant Material passing through the core is called the coolant. It also transfers heat usually from fuel to turbine. A coolant can be the normal water, liquid sodium, or heavy water. The turbine The turbine receives heat from the coolant then generates it to electricity. This takes the same method as it happens in fossil fuel plant. Containment This is the general high-density steel structure-separating reactor from environment. Most are dome shaped and usually reinforced in concrete. Cooling towers These are used in Plants to dump excess ive heat that have not been transformed to energy. They only emit vapor and clean water commonly referred to as hyperbolic icons. Different types of nuclear reactors There exists a variety of nuclear reactors usually of different pursposes, fuel cycles, coolants, and different fuels. Some of them include; Pressurized water reactor This is the most prevalent type of nuclear reactor. It uses the normal regular water as coolant. The cooling water is kept at very high pressures to keep it from boiling. It transfers heat to the secondary coolant loop after passing through heat exchanger. This then keeps turbine in motion. This type of reactor uses oxide fuel pellets compressed in zirconium tubes (Frog 40). This type of reactor has its pros and cons depending on circumstances. On the positive site, it has the void coefficient, which is strong and negative. Reactor easily cools down when water begins to bubble. Secondly, the secondary loop prevents radioactive materials from reaching the t urbines, which eases maintenance. Procedures have been optimized due to accumulated operating experiences. On the other side, coolants under heavy pressure have a high likely hood of escaping in the eventuality a pipe breaks. This reactor is not able to breed new fuel as result of it being susceptible concerning uranium shortage (Weston 56-58). Canada Deuterium-Uranium Reactors (CANDUs) First used in Canada, they usually contain heavy water with extra neutron in hydrogen. This therefore results to Deuterium taking place of pure hydrogen. Since Deuterium has limited capacity in absorbing neutrons compared to hydrogen, CANDUs operate strictly on natural uranium and not enriched. Its advantages are that it needs limited uranium enrichment .For this reason, it can usually be refueled when in operation which keeps capacity factors high. They possess the flexibility nature and uses different types of fuel. Its demerits are based on safety concerns since some variants posse’s positi ve coolant coefficients. Sodium Cooled Reactor Sodium metal, which is liquid in nature, cools down these types of reactors. Since sodium is heavier than hydrogen, it enables neutrons to move at higher speed. These types of reactors use oxide or metal fuels and have the potential to burn everything thrown at them (Uranium, higher actinides, plutonium and thorium). The advantage of these reactors is that they have the capability to breed their own