Page 4 - Control Rods News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

The raw material for nuclear weapons. but second, beyond the nuclear waste problem, nuclear power production is kind of a high-wire act, when the whole idea behind what you're doing depends on this plant controlling a nuclear chain reaction, you really can't afford anything that might interrupt your control. if there's any disturbance, say an earthquake, the chain reaction process is immediately shut down, control rods drop into the hot nuclear core to stop the fission process. even when it is not in effect turned on, that core is still so hot that a lot of things still have to go right in ord...

Disaster. one, two, three, and four. this is friday. 9.0 earthquake and tsunami hit japan in 2:00 in the afternoon local time. and a state of emergency declared later at the daiichi fukushima power plant. authorities reveal the cooling systems are not working. so here's saturday now. 4:19 p.m., officials reveal radiation levels at fukushima are eight times the normal level. hours later, an explosion in reactor one. here is why. here's reactor one here. you can see what's happening inside as they're trying to get this cooled down. but when the power's cut, the water which keeps things cool goes...

They are creating a nuclear reactor to generate heat. the whole point of nuclear power is that you create an environment in which fission happens. a nuclear chain reaction happens, but it is controlled, so it does not produce an explosion. it just generates heat in a controlled way instead. use that heat to essentially boil water. actually, you literally use it to boil water. boiling water makes steam, steam spins a turbine, and that makes electricity. that's the basic idea behind the 40-year-old reactors in japan in so much trouble now. when the reactor is on, in effect, the uranium pellets i...

>> that's how amazing this little cube of one pound of uranium is. >> but that tells you how much energy is stored in there. >> it is what boils the steam into pressure, that pressures the turbines that makes the power. you could put a giant bowl of coal down here and run it forever, but this control rod, fuel rod, steam line makes an awful lot of power in a small space. so let's go the pressure vessel, the control rods, the fuel rods. zoom right in. the fuel rods made of uranium 235 go into the water here. the water steams and makes a lot of pressure. when you want to cool down your pressure,...

Happens. a nuclear chain reaction happens, but it is controlled, so it does not produce an explosion. it just generates heat in a controlled way instead. use that heat to essentially boil water. actually, you literally use it to boil water. boiling water makes steam, steam spins a turbine, and that makes electricity. that's the basic idea behind the 40-year-old reactors in japan in so much trouble now. when the reactor is on, in effect, the uranium pellets inside the big 12 foot long fuel rods are involved in a nuclear chain reaction generating heat. when they shut off the reactor in the norma...