Nuclear Power

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plants generate only about eleven percent of the world's electricity. There are around 316 plants in the world that create 213,000 megawatts of electricity. (INFOPEDIA) Radioactive, or nuclear, waste is the by-product of nuclear fission. Fission occurs when atoms' nucleus' split and cause a nuclear reaction. (General Information) When a free neutron splits a nucleus, energy is released along with free neutrons, fission fragments that give off beta rays, and gamma rays. A free neutron from the nucleus that just split splits another nucleus. This process continues on and is called a chain reaction. (World Book vol. 14, 588)
The fission process is used to create heat, which boils water inside the nuclear reactor. The steam that boiling the water makes is used to turn turbines, which in turn, generate electricity. Fission happens inside a carefully monitored nuclear reactor, when being used in a plant. The fission process that plants use spends approximately 30,000 tons of ...

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in a safe place for thousands of years so its radioactivity can die down and not be harmful to people and the environment. The name of the safe place that the Department of Energy is trying to make is called a repository. But until a repository is made, spent fuel and high-level waste is being stored in temporary storage facilities called dry casks and cooling pools. By the end of the year 2000, there will be more than 40,000 metric tons of high-level waste in casks and storage pools. There will also be more than 8,000 metric tons of high-level waste from defense programs. The high-level waste from defense programs is currently being stored in Idaho, South Carolina, and Washington. ...

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