what kind of energy is taken out of the reactor?
86147
Heat energy.\n\nThere is water (or a water mixture) cooling the core directly.  This water is radioactive.  You then have coils running in the water which have other water (protected from the radiation) coursing through them.  This water gets the heat transfered to it and turns to steam.  The steam runs turbines that turn a magnet core in the center of a copper coil that in turn produces electricity.\n\nHope this answers it for ya, feel free to email me!
548851
Some pros to this energy source are: 1) Vast new source of energy 2) Fuels (mostly hydrogen) are plentiful 3) Inherently safe since a malfunction results in a rapid shutdown 4) No atmospheric pollution leading to acid rain or "greenhouse" effect 5) Radioactivity of the reactor structure, caused by neutrons, decays rapidly and can be minimized by careful selection of low-activation materials. There is basically only one con to these energy sources though. Scientists have not figured out a way to make it efficiently. At this point they have sustained a reaction at the break-even point, which essentially means they used as much energy as they created to make the reaction take place.
324432
Quick summery:\n\nFusion produces energy by taking very light elements, like hydorgen, and combining them together to form heavier ones like helium.  4H -> 1He.  If you take a look at the mass of 4 hydrogen atoms you will find that they have more mass than 1 helium atom.  This extra mass is converted into energy in fusion (E = mc^2).\n\nNow this produces a ton of energy (it is what powers the sun), but you need extream conditions (high temperature and pressure) to do it.  In order to make a hydrogen bomb, that is a bomb that uses fusion to generate the energy to do its dirty work, we need a source of intense heat.\n\nThat is why typically we trigger our hydrogen bombs with a small atomic bomb.  An atomic bomb generates energy through breaking large elements (uranium) into lighter ones.  Just like fusion, there is a mass difference between what you start with, and what you end with.  That missing mass goes into eneregy.  Fission is easy to strat, just get enough fissionable material together and presto.\n\nSo, you use the energy/heat produced by the little atomic bomb to super-heat your fusion fuel (hydrogen isotopes), and bang -> hydrogen bomb.\n\nTo be specific it is actually a three-stage detonation.  You use a conventional bomb to set off the fission (atomic) bomb, which in turn sets off the fusion (hydrogen) bomb.
765354
a-decreases\n\nand only about 10% of the energy is actually passed on
848476
Measuring the background radiation.\nCalculations involving half life.\nCalculating the energy of fusion and fission reactions.
40675
The source of energy is food. Food is digested, giving you energy.
897311
the lighter elements need less energy to scrap an electron from the outer shell
826107
Nuclear reactors are basically heat engines. As uranium fissions, the breaking apart of atoms releases energy, much of it in the form of heat, which can then be used to do work. In a nuclear-powered submarine, reactor heat produces steam to drive the turbines that provide the submarine's actual power. The development of compact, safe, and highly reliable pressurized water reactors for naval use in the early 1950s was the major technological achievement that made nuclear-powered submarines possible.\n\nHow Reactors Work\nNaval pressurized-water reactors include a primary coolant system and a secondary coolant system. The primary system circulates water, which is pressurized to keep it from boiling, in a closed loop. As water passes through the reactor, it is heated. It then goes through the steam generator, where it gives up its heat to generate steam in the secondary system. Finally, it flows back to the reactor to be heated again. Inside the steam generator, heat energy is transferred across a watertight boundary to the secondary system, also a closed loop. The unpressurized water in the secondary system turns to steam when heated. The steam, in turn, flows through the secondary system to the propulsion turbines, which turn the propellers, and to the turbine generators, which supply electricity. As it cools, it condenses to water and is pumped back to the steam generator.
368323
E=MC2 doesn't talk about radiation.  It is about energy.  Nuclear bombs and nuclear reactors work off of the same principle.  Just in nuclear reactors, the reaction is controlled and made safe, and in bombs, the energy is released all at once.  When an atom is "split", the total mass of the origional atom and the neutron that splits it is more than the pieces that it breaks into.  That difference becomes heat energy, and the E=MC2 tells you how much energy.  The radiation that everyone associates with it comes before and after the nuclear reaction, when the nuclear fuel and daughter products (the pieces the atom split into) decay and emit various forms of radiation, depending on what is decaying.  E=MC2 doesn't talk about this part of the process, just about the moment the atom actually splits.  To reverse the process and convert energy into mass is mainly theoretical, though it is possible.  Lab conditions have achieved microscopicly small results.  This is the process that the transporters and replicators use on Star Trek.
435251
Nuclear energy is an energy that comes from the conversion of masss into energy following e=(mass)(speed of light^2)\n\nWhen atoms are binded they use energy. And when they bind the total mass is less then the mass of each atoms before binding.  The mass is turned into energy to bind the atoms. \nMass= (mass of all protons + mass of all neutron) - Mass after binded\n\nTake the mass from the first equation and multiply it by 931.494 Mev/u\n\nThis will give you the binding energy. \n\nThis leads to an exothermic reaction that releases nuclear enrgy. Fision and Fusion follow these princables and release great amoutns of energy. \n\nWe have not yet devoloped an effeciant way of harnessing this power, we can get about 1% effeciancy. If you turned an apple into pure enrgy you would have enough energy to level the world many times over with just a couple apples.
748939
I assume you are talking about extracting the Plutonium and Uranium 235 from the spent fuel currently stored in casks and storage pools.  Yes, it is feasible to cull these isotopes from the waste fuel, and use it to make new fuel to place back in reactors to make electrical power.\n\nThe spent fuel currently stored in casks generate very little heat outside the cask and not enough in the casks to be a practical source for electrical generation.
381406
Define power.\nElectricity is the flow of electrons through a substance.\nIn the United States, electricity can be generated through coal/fossil fuel burning plants, nuclear power plants, wind(mills), and solar energy collection.\n\nIn fossil fuel and nuclear plants, they use the furnace and nuclear reactor to heat up water in order to turn a turbine, which spins around an electromagnet to generate electricity. There is much loss of energy through this process because much of the energy used to heat the water is lost through convection.  In windmills, the wind directly turns the turbine, so there is not as much loss, plus, it is a renewable resource.
403672
Maybe you are referring to uranium enrichment?\n\nUranium found in nature consists largely of two isotopes, U-235 and U-238. The production of energy in nuclear reactors is from the `fission' or splitting of the U-235 atoms, a process which releases energy in the form of heat. U-235 is the main fissile isotope of uranium.\n\nNatural uranium contains 0.7% of the U-235 isotope. The remaining 99.3% is mostly the U-238 isotope which does not contribute directly to the fission process (though it does so indirectly by the formation of fissile isotopes of plutonium).\n\nUranium-235 and U-238 are chemically identical, but differ in their physical properties, particularly their mass. The nucleus of the U-235 atom contains 92 protons and 143 neutrons, giving an atomic mass of 235 units. The U-238 nucleus also has 92 protons but has 146 neutrons - three more than U-235, and therefore has a mass of 238 units.\n\nThe difference in mass between U-235 and U-238 allows the isotopes to be separated and makes it possible to increase or "enrich" the percentage of U-235. All present enrichment processes, directly or indirectly, make use of this small mass difference. \n\nA number of enrichment processes have been demonstrated in the laboratory but only two, the gaseous diffusion process and the centrifuge process, are operating on a commercial scale. In both of these, UF6 gas is used as the feed material. Molecules of UF6 with U-235 atoms are about one percent lighter than the rest, and this difference in mass is the basis of both processes.\n\nLarge commercial enrichment plants are in operation in France, Germany, Netherlands, UK, USA, and Russia, with smaller plants elsewhere.
548164
Your question is a very good one and everyone here is trying to help. Let me wade in with what I hope is a clear answer or two.\n\nCommercial reactors do not have the configuration to do what a nuclear bomb does: go promptly critical and thus have a large-scale supercritical nuclear explosion. Even Chernobyl (may the 40 or so people who died from it rest in peace) was mostly a steam explosion with a burning of the graphite core. The RBMK reactors like Chernobyl have mostly been shut down now - folks in the former Soviet Union may chime in now as to their status. \n\nModern commercial nuclear reactors (unlike the RBMK design) have large concrete domes called containments over them. The containment structures are designed to hold large amounts of pressure to guard against an accidental release of radiation. Even if the reactor core (part with the nuclear fuel) should become uncovered and thus lose its cooling, the containment will hold most of the radioactive material inside. That is precisely what happened at Three Mile Island. Most of the fuel and fission products were in the containment basement and plated out on the walls.\n\nThe most credible accidents are practiced for often at every power plant. Drills exercise the staff from the control room to the folks who go out into the field to survey for radiation. Those drills are graded not just by the plant, not just by the NRC, but by the county and state. \n\nNuclear reactors do not become nuclear bombs. If you were to take used fuel from nuclear reactors and chemically reprocess it - separating out the plutonium that is made in small amounts in the fuel - you could eventually make a bomb. We do not do reprocessing of commercial nuclear fuel in the US. There is a worry that some countries may do that. Of course, that is precisely what the military does do.\n\nMy job? I am a Health Physicist. I teach radiation protection, nuclear physics, and radiation chemistry. In the event of an accident, I read remote monitors and figure out what the pathway the radionuclides are taking out, how much, and what dose might be delivered to the population downwind. My predictions are used to advise the county about evacuation of persons living in a 20 mile radius of the power plant. I have a Bachelors of Science in biology from Baylor University, Masters in Applied Nuclear Science from Georgia Tech, and my PhD work was in leukemia research at Baylor Col. of Medicine. I was part of the Three Mile Island Recovery Team.
651919
From the website below:  \n\nDesign Fault In The RBMK Reactor - The RBMK reactor type used at Chernobyl suffers from instability at low power and thus may experience a rapid , uncontrollable power increase. Although other reactor types have this problem they incorporate design features to stop instability from occurring. The cause of this instability is: \n\n  > Water is a better coolant than steam \n\n  > The water acts as a moderator and neutron absorber (slowing down the reaction) whilst steam does not. \n\nExcess steam pockets in the RBMK design lead to increased power generation - this is known as a positive void coefficient. This excess power causes additional heating thus producing more steam and means less neutron absorption causing the problem to escalate. This all happens very rapidly and if it is not stopped quickly it is very hard to stop as it supplies itself.
208864
Here is a little information about Nuclear Energy:\nhttp://home.clara.net/darvill/altenerg/nuclear.htm
119700
An induced nuclear fission event. A thermal (slow-moving) neutron is absorbed by the nucleus of a uranium-235 atom, which in turn splits into fast-moving lighter elements (fission products) and free neutrons. The particular elements and number of neutrons produced by each single fission event are random.Nuclear fission is a process in nuclear physics in which the nucleus of an atom splits into two or more smaller nuclei as fission products, and usually some by-product particles. Hence, fission is a form of elemental transmutation. The by-products include free neutrons, photons usually in the form gamma rays, and other nuclear fragments such as beta particles and alpha particles. Fission of heavy elements is an exothermic reaction and can release substantial amounts of useful energy both as gamma rays and as kinetic energy of the fragments.\n\nNuclear fission is used to produce energy for nuclear power and to drive explosion of nuclear weapons. Fission is useful as a power source because some materials, called nuclear fuels, both generate neutrons as part of the fission process and also undergo triggered fission when impacted by a free neutron. Nuclear fuels can be part of a self-sustaining chain reaction that releases energy at a controlled rate in a nuclear reactor or a very rapid uncontrolled rate in a nuclear weapon.\n\nThe amount of free energy contained in nuclear fuel is millions of times the amount of energy contained in a similar mass of chemical fuel such as gasoline, making nuclear fission a very tempting source of energy; however, the waste products of nuclear fission are highly radioactive and remain so for millennia, giving rise to a nuclear waste problem. Concerns over nuclear waste accumulation and over the immense destructive potential of nuclear weapons counterbalance the desirable qualities of fission as an energy source, and give rise to intense ongoing political debate over nuclear power.