What is a nuclear reactor?
Q: What is a nuclear reactor?
A: A nuclear reactor is a machine that uses fission to generate heat. Different designs use different fuels, often uranium-235 or plutonium-239, and most are used to make electricity.
Q: How does a nuclear reactor produce electricity?
A: In nuclear power plants the heat from the fission reactions in the reactor changes water into steam which powers electric turbines which make electricity. The turbines take energy from the movement of the steam.
Q: What other purposes do some reactors serve?
A: Some reactors make neutrons for science research and others make radioactive isotopes. Some universities have small nuclear reactors to teach students how reactors work.
Q: Who built the first nuclear reactor?
A: The first nuclear reactor was built in 1942 by a team of scientists led by Enrico Fermi as part of the Manhattan Project which needed fuel from the reactor to make an atomic bomb.
Q: When was the first nuclear reactor used to produce electricity?
A: The first nuclear reactor used to make electricity was a small experimental one built in Idaho in 1951, producing enough electricity for four light globes.
Q: Why are they expensive to build?
A: Nuclear reactors are expensive to build because of all of their safety features that need to be included.
Q: What problems arise with using them?
A: There is also a problem with huge amounts of radioactive waste produced by these reactors, as well as serious accidents at several locations around the world such as Windscale (UK) 1957, Mayak (USSR) 1957, Three Mile Island (USA) 1979, Chernobyl (USSR) 1986 and Fukushima (Japan) 2011 which have caused concern about safety and limited growth in this area of energy production.
