3.6. Nuclear? http://www.ck12.org
3.6 Nuclear?
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 power comes in two flavours. Nuclearfissionis the flavour that we know how to use in power stations;
fission uses uranium, an exceptionally heavy element, as fuel. Nuclearfusionis the flavour that we don’t yet know
how to implement in power stations; fusion would use light elements, especially hydrogen, as its fuel. Fission
reactions split up heavy nuclei into medium-sized nuclei, releasing energy. Fusion reactions fuse light nuclei into
medium-sized nuclei, releasing energy.
Figure 24.1:Electricity generated per capita from nuclear fission in 2007, in kWh per day per person, in each of the
countries with nuclear power.
Both forms of nuclear power, fission and fusion, have an important property: the nuclear energy available per atom
is roughly one million times bigger than the chemical energy per atom of typical fuels. This means that the amounts