Clyde Burnett, Peak to Peak.   Nuclear power involves the release of large amounts of energy in strong, short-range nuclear force reactions with mass converted into energy according to E = Mc2. It should be noted at the outset that nuclear power has a fundamental advantage: there is no production of greenhouse gases like CO2 characteristic of the familiar chemical reactions in oxidation (burning) of carbon-containing fuels like wood and its fossilized material of coal, oil, and gas.

Question: How is energy produced from nuclear fission?

Answer:  Nuclear fission is the splitting of a heavy nucleus like Uranium into smaller nuclei like Barium and Krypton resulting in a mass decrease and energy release. The reaction can be triggered by neutrons and the products include more neutrons. These must be controlled by neutron absorbers to prevent an explosive chain reaction. Because of the electrostatic repulsion between the positive charged protons, the heavy nuclei contain more neutrons than protons. (U235 has 92 protons, 143 neutrons.) The fission products then contain too many neutrons to be stable and they are radioactive, emitting gamma radiation and beta rays (high energy electrons).

The threat of the development of a nuclear bomb by Germany triggered a warning in a letter by Einstein to President Roosevelt that began the nuclear research in the Manhattan project. The first controlled fission reaction was accomplished in 1942 by Dr. Enrico Fermi, an Italian immigrant refugee from the government of Mussolini. His reactor was constructed in the squash courts at the University of Chicago with uranium producing and reacting with slow neutrons in blocks of graphite. The chain reaction was controlled with neutron absorption by cadmium. His announcement was “The Italian navigator has just landed in the New World”. “The natives are friendly”.

Subsequent research for the fission bomb was conducted at Los Alamos and the Trinity test explosion near Socorro, New Mexico, occurred on July 16, 1945. The first nuclear fission bomb was used on August 6, 1945 at Hiroshima, Japan, with great structural damage and human suffering from radioactivity.

Question:  What are the difficulties of the peaceful use of nuclear fission for power?

Answer: The peaceful use of nuclear energy in controlled fission reactors now produces heat for steam generation for conventional electricity generation. The construction of the reactors for very large safe power generation is time consuming and very expensive. The control of the chain reaction continues to be successfully done with the automatic use of neutron absorption material. However, the generation of heat and radioactivity of the fuel rods cannot be stopped. If these are not adequately cooled, there will be heat damage and danger of the spread of radioactivity. This has occurred in the accidents at 3-mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.

The Fort Saint Vrain Generating Station was Colorado’s only nuclear power plant, operating from 1979 to 1989. (I wonder if my readers were aware.) It was rated at 330 Megawatts, making it one of the early small reactors suitable for low capacity electric grids of the type that are presently being studied in Russia, India, and China. The Colorado reactor was one of the original high temperature gas cooled reactors; it used uranium to produce neutrons moderated with graphite for reaction with thorium, producing another isotope of uranium that produced the energy in fission. This procedure was less dangerous than earlier uranium reactors. This method also does not produce the long-life waste that includes plutonium useful for bombs and attractive to terrorists. However, there were serious operational cooling problems, initially with helium gas. and the reactor was decommissioned and the installation was sold to Xcel and converted to the present natural gas electric power generation.