RENEWABLE RESOURCES

NUCLEAR ENERGY

Nuclear energy is a modern kind of energy source; an application of physics development of the last century. Science has always been used, either during peaceful periods or in wars. Nuclear power has well-known effects during the Second World War; this fact gave a bad name to this source. Although nuclear science has applications for health reasons and weapons, as in every science we can make peaceful applications as well as not.

We made the mistake of lumping nuclear energy in with nuclear weapons, as if all things nuclear were evil. I think that’s as big a mistake as if you lumped nuclear medicine in with nuclear weapons.

Patrick Moore,
former Director of Greenpeace International

Nuclear science came as an idea since ancient Greek philosophers, who tried to find out how many times we can cut a material. This came to the idea of non-dividable elements, the atoms. Atom comes from the Greek word atomo which means non dividable structure (comes from two parts, a+tomi=α+τομή à atomo=άτομο). The simple questions of how many times can someone slice any material; became the nuclear science! In the 18^th century, scientists started researches in their laboratories to learn more about this idea. A British physicist Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937) was the first who realized the amount of energy which is hiding in such a small structure as the atom; he also realized that we can use this energy by dividing the non-dividable structure of an atom. Albert Einstein developed a theory, after Rutherford, which explained the relation between the mass and the energy, this is the well know formula E=mc². Later word wars influenced scientist on the way of using this energy, which were the first application of nuclear science used for mass destruction weapons. At the period of 1939-45 nearly all researches on nuclear energy had one goal; the strongest weapon. Soviets used for the first time nuclear fusion in Hydrogen bombs at 1950. After the World War II the scientific community with governmental help from a lot of countries, decided to make researches about peaceful use of nuclear energy, only.

Since then, Nuclear power is used to produce electricity, heat, water desalination, ship propulsion and supply of space aircraft energy, fuel synthesis (including hydrogen production), coal gasification, oil extraction and the use of nuclear submarines for fossil fuel transportation from deep-sea locations. We can utilize energy from the nucleus on to basic ways: nuclear fusion and nuclear fission. They are exactly the opposite, the one from the other. Fission is the division of the nucleus, in addition to fusion, which is the union of different nucleus. Both do not cause any air pollution and they are very efficient ways of producing energy. Only fission produces radioactive waste that causes a kind of pollution.

Nuclear Fission

This is a well-known way to produce electricity, since Rutherford was thinking about it, until well-known events like World War II and Chernobyl. Nuclear fission uses heavy elements and after the fission the element is medium-seized. The fuel needed to produce this energy is Uranium and Plutonium isotopes. It requires just some atoms to make produce about 200million electron volts. Nuclear fission is responsible for the invention of some elements such as Plutonium, Neptunium and other chemical elements invented on the 20^th century.

Nuclear Fusion

Nuclear fusion is the union of two nucleuses that releases energy. This is the process that gives to the sun that big temperatures and so much light; in general this spring of energy. Two different Hydrogen isotopes are united to produce Helium, release one neutron and huge amount of energy; even more than nuclear fission. As far as nuclear fusion produces Helium, is absolutely friendly with the environment and hydrogen is really easy to find, which makes it very cheap. Although, as this process is taking place to the sun, we can realise the temperatures it produces. Even worst, to start a new fusion chain reaction the temperature of the elements environment, has to be some million Kelvin. Thus scientists can’t use controlled nuclear fusion as there is not any existence of any material to cope with this temperature and there is a big energy loss to start it. As everything else seems to be perfect, scientists have to find a solution for this problem, so that energy crisis will be solved! A team of scientists urged that they found a way to use “cold fusion” which failed to duplicate as experiment. A lot of scientists try to find how to produce low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR); even if it looks impossible, it seems that they are too close.

Local news

United Kingdom’s government uses nuclear power reactors commercially since 1956. Today 19 reactors produce 25% of electricity demands for the whole country. The use of nuclear energy is helping the UK to reach the goals of reducing CO₂ emissions. France sells some of the nuclear energy to England which covers approximately 3% of the total electrical capacity of the country.