Nuclear power is power (generally electrical) produced from controlled (i.e., non-explosive) nuclear reactions. Commercial plants in use to date use nuclear fission reactions. Electric utility reactors heat water to produce steam, which is then used to generate electricity. In 2007, 14% of the world's electricity came from nuclear power, despite concerns about safety and radioactive waste management. More than 150 naval vessels using nuclear propulsion have been built.
Nuclear fusion reactions are widely believed to be safer than fission and appear potentially viable, though technically quite difficult. Fusion power has been under intense theoretical and experimental investigation for many years.
Both fission and fusion appear promising for some space propulsion applications in the mid- to distant-future, using low thrust for long durations to achieve high mission velocities. Radioactive decay has been used on a relatively small (few kW) scale, mostly to power space missions and experiments.
Use
See also: Nuclear power by country and List of nuclear reactorsAs of 2005, nuclear power provided 2.1% of the world's energy and 15% of the world's electricity, with the U.S., France, and Japan together accounting for 56.5% of nuclear generated electricity. In 2007, the IAEA reported there were 439 nuclear power reactors in operation in the world, operating in 31 countries.
In 2007, nuclear power's share of global electricity generation dropped to 14%. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the main reason for this was an earthquake in western Japan on 16 July 2007, which shut down all seven reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant. There were also several other reductions and "unusual outages" experienced in Korea and Germany. Also, increases in the load factor for the current fleet of reactors appear to have plateaued.
The United States produces the most nuclear energy, with nuclear power providing 19% of the electricity it consumes, while France produces the highest percentage of its electrical energy from nuclear reactors—78% as of 2006. In the European Union as a whole, nuclear energy provides 30% of the electricity. Nuclear energy policy differs between European Union countries, and some, such as Austria, Estonia, and Ireland, have no active nuclear power stations. In comparison, France has a large number of these plants, with 16 multi-unit stations in current use.
In the US, while the Coal and Gas Electricity industry is projected to be worth $85 billion by 2013, Nuclear Power generators are forecast to be worth $18 billion.
Many military and some civilian (such as some icebreaker) ships use nuclear marine propulsion, a form of nuclear propulsion. A few space vehicles have been launched using full-fledged nuclear reactors: the Soviet RORSAT series and the American SNAP-10A.
International research is continuing into safety improvements such as passively safe plants, the use of nuclear fusion, and additional uses of process heat such as hydrogen production (in support of a hydrogen economy), for desalinating sea water, and for use in district heating systems.
History
Origins
As the father of nuclear physics, Ernest Rutherford is credited with splitting the atom in 1917. His team in England bombarded nitrogen with naturally occurring alpha particles from radioactive material and observed a proton emitted with energy higher than the alpha particle. In 1932 two of his students John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, working under Rutherford's direction, attempted to split the atomic nucleus by entirely artificial means, using a particle accelerator to bombard lithium with protons, thereby producing two helium nuclei.
After James Chadwick discovered the neutron in 1932, nuclear fission was first experimentally achieved by Enrico Fermi in 1934 in Rome, when his team bombarded uranium with neutrons. In 1938, German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, along with Austrian physicists Lise Meitner and Meitner's nephew, Otto Robert Frisch, conducted experiments with the products of neutron-bombarded uranium. They determined that the relatively tiny neutron split the nucleus of the massive uranium atoms into two roughly equal pieces, which was a surprising result. Numerous scientists, including Leo Szilard who was one of the first, recognized that if fission reactions released additional neutrons, a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction could result. This spurred scientists in many countries (including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and the Soviet Union) to petition their government for support of nuclear fission research.
In the United States, where Fermi and Szilard had both emigrated, this led to the creation of the first man-made reactor, known as Chicago Pile-1, which achieved criticality on December 2, 1942. This work became part of the Manhattan Project, which built large reactors at the Hanford Site (formerly the town of Hanford, Washington) to breed plutonium for use in the first nuclear weapons, which were used on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A parallel uranium enrichment effort also was pursued.
After World War II, the fear that reactor research would encourage the rapid spread of nuclear weapons and technology, combined with what many scientists thought would be a long road of development, created a situation in which the government attempted to keep reactor research under strict government control and classification. In addition, most reactor research centered on purely military purposes. There was an immediate arms and development race when the United States military refused to follow the advice of its own scientific community to form an international cooperative to share information and control nuclear materials. By 2006, things have come full circle with the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (see below.)
Electricity was generated for the first time by a nuclear reactor on December 20, 1951 at the EBR-I experimental station near Arco, Idaho, which initially produced about 100 kW (the Arco Reactor was also the first to experience partial meltdown, in 1955). In 1952, a report by the Paley Commission ( The President's Materials Policy Commission ) for President Harry Truman made a "relatively pessimistic" assessment of nuclear power, and called for "aggressive research in the whole field of solar energy." A December 1953 speech by President Dwight Eisenhower, "Atoms for Peace," emphasized the useful harnessing of the atom and set the U.S. on a course of strong government support for international use of nuclear power.
Early years
On June 27, 1954, the USSR's Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant became the world's first nuclear power plant to generate electricity for a power grid, and produced around 5 megawatts of electric power.
Later in 1954, Lewis Strauss, then chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission (U.S. AEC, forerunner of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the United States Department of Energy) spoke of electricity in the future being "too cheap to meter." The U.S. AEC itself had issued far more conservative testimony regarding nuclear fission to the U.S. Congress only months before, projecting that "costs can be brought down... ... about the same as the cost of electricity from conventional sources..." Strauss may have been making vague reference to hydrogen fusion - which was secret at the time - rather than uranium fission, but whatever his intent Strauss's statement was interpreted by much of the public as a promise of very cheap energy from nuclear fission. Significant disappointment would develop later on, when the new nuclear plants did not provide energy "too cheap to meter."
In 1955 the United Nations' "First Geneva Conference", then the world's largest gathering of scientists and engineers, met to explore the technology. In 1957 EURATOM was launched alongside the European Economic Community (the latter is now the European Union). The same year also saw the launch of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The world's first commercial nuclear power station, Calder Hall in Sellafield, England was opened in 1956 with an initial capacity of 50 MW (later 200 MW). The first commercial nuclear generator to become operational in the United States was the Shippingport Reactor (Pennsylvania, December, 1957).
One of the first organizations to develop nuclear power was the U.S. Navy, for the purpose of propelling submarines and aircraft carriers. It has a good record in nuclear safety, perhaps because of the stringent demands of Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, who was the driving force behind nuclear marine propulsion as well as the Shippingport Reactor. The U.S. Navy has operated more nuclear reactors than any other entity, including the Soviet Navy, with no publicly known major incidents. The first nuclear-powered submarine, USS Nautilus (SSN-571), was put to sea in December 1954. Two U.S. nuclear
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