David Faucett, age 1.1, of Wrentham, Mass., for his question:
How is atomic energy used to make power?
During first big plant for producing electric power from nuclear energy is in Shippington, Pa. Seen from outside, it is a smooth dome surrounded by a brood of squat buildings, grids of metal pipes and streamers of wire cables. This power plant of the future produces electricity for 100,000 homes, and still more of its output is used for research.
The electric power we use is produced by humming turbines and generators. The current is sent streaming through long cables and wires when copper coils are made to spin around inside a magnetic field. This power is generated inside the generator. The twirling job is done by a pin wheeling turbine. A shaft from the spinning turbine may turn a giant arm of copper through the field of a monster magnet. Or it may twist the magnet around and around the arm of copper.
The turbine is turned by mechanical energy. It may be driven by the tumbling torrent of a waterfall or by squirting steam from a heated boiler. The atomic power plant of the future also generates electricity with turbines and generators. Its turbines also are turned by steam. However, its steam is produced by atomic energy from a nuclear reactor.
The reactor is an atomic pile in which the nuclei of atoms are split by nuclear fission. Large atoms of radioactive fuel, such as uranium or plutonium, are split into small atoms. This releases Seething nuclear energy. Neutrons are freed to bombard and split more fuel atoms, and a chain reaction of nuclear activity is kept going.
The A bomb is a sudden explosion of this nuclear fission. In a reactor, the seething atom splitting is controlled at a steady pace. The radioactive fuel is sealed in metal and concrete. Rods of carbon or cadmium, boron or hafnium thrust in and out of the seething fuel. These substances absorb surplus neutrons and hence control the rate of the radioactive chain reaction.
The seething core heats a supply of circulating water to perhaps 550 degrees Fahrenheit. This water is sealed under pressure to stop it from turning to steam. Its pipes coil through a water tank called the heat exchanger. The water in this tank is heated by the hot water pipes from the radioactive core. It boils and changes to steam. This is the steam that turns the turbine that turns the copper or the magnet in the generator.
In old style power plants, the steam which turns the turbines is produced by coal fuel. In a modern nuclear power plant, the steam is drawn from the seething heat of radioactive fuel. In both cases, the power in the generator is led into a loop of copper cables. These and other wires carry the current for miles and miles. The electricity from a coal or water driven plant is exactly like that which comes from a plant powered by a nuclear reactor.