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Pros And Cons Of Building A Nuclear Reactor

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I am writing this report to advise the Far North Distrcit Council on the use of nuclear reactors as a power source. While New Zealand has a history of being anti-nuclear there are many benefits of having a nuclear power station. I will discuss the pros and cons of building a reactor and how they work.

There are two types of nuclear reactors these are called fission and fusion. A fusion reaction takes place when two lighter atomic nuclei usually deuterium and tritium or helium are bonded into a heavier element and give off energy this is usually done by forcing them to collide at very high speeds in order to over come the force produced by coulombic repulsion. A fission reaction is when a nuclei splits into multiple other elements. Part of …show more content…

The water used to cool the system is turned to steam and this steam then escapes the system and turns steam turbines that provide electricity.

The waste created by nuclear reactors is small when compared to other sources of power like coal or oil. Especially when it is a fusion reactor as all of the radioactive components are readily available in sea water.

Breakdown:

One of the most common forms of Fission reactor uses uranium 235. The reaction is started by firing a neutron at the uranium 235 this causes it to change into the more unstable uranium 236 which then breaks into Barium 141 and krypton 92 and releases energy in the form of gamma radiation.

23592U+ 1 n > 23692U > 14156Ba+ 9236Kr+ 3 1n +

The first law of thermo dynamics states that energy cannot be lost or gained in an isolated system and that it can only be changed from one state into another. Knowing this I can see that the amount of mass lost during the reaction will equate to the amount of energy gained. The amount of energy released can be found using the formula e=mc2 in order to find the energy released we have to compare the total mass before and after the reaction.

Mass(m)
Uranium 390.248010-27Kg
Barium 233.961610-27Kg
Krypton

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