Question by xenomorphine: How is nuclear power created and why is it so dangerous?
How do nuclear power plants actually create energy? And why is the radiation they make so dangerous that it causes DNA damage, deformities, cancer etc?
Best answer:
Answer by U235_PORTS
Nuclear power plants create electricity the same way coal plants do. They both boil water to create steam to push through a turbine. The spinning shaft on the turbine is connected to a shaft on an electrical generator to actually generate electricity. In a nuclear reactor, the uranium-235 atoms are fissioning and releasing neutrons into the water. The neutrons smash into the water molecules causing them to vibrate. Molecular vibration is just a fancy way of saying the water heats up. After a few collisions, the neutrons either cause another fission or get absorbed or leak from the reactor or decay. If at least one neutron from each fission causes another fission, the reactor is at a self-sustaining level of power. In other words, the system has reached critical mass. If, out of 100 fissions, 101 or more neutrons go on to generate another fission, the system is supercritical and will rapidly go out of control. If, out of 100 fissions, 99 or less neutrons go on to generate another fission, the system is subcritical and will rapidly shutdown. There are trillions and trillions of atoms of U-235 in the core, so the numbers of neutrons and fissions is very very large.
Radiation is dangerous because it is ionizing radiation. The radiation has enough energy to smash into atoms and cause them to lose electrons. When atoms lose electrons, the chemical bonds they are part of will also break. Imagine a complicated mechanical system that is miles high and miles wide. Inside the system are gears and pulleys and all manner of mechanical devices. Some of the devices are made to fix other parts of the system when they fail. Some of the devices allow the whole machine to process energy, move parts, lubricate parts, compute information, eliminate waste, regenerate broken parts, grow new parts, etc. If you throw a rock into this system, you might ding something, but it won’t break. If you shoot a bullet into the system, however, things are probably going to break, depending on what the bullet hits. If the damage is minor, the fixing machines can repair the damage. However, if there are lots of bullets, the damage will become too high to compensate for and things will start to fail. Fortunately, the machine was built to withstand millions of bullet hits per second throughout its huge volume. It would take millions and millions of more hits to overwhelm the repair mechanisms and cause significant problems.
In a cell, ionizing radiation is like the bullets above. The radiation can damage a part of the cell, but the cell can repair it. The radiation can damage the cell enough to kill the cell, but the body will just eject the cell because cells die all the time. However, if enough radiation damages enough cells, the whole body will begin to suffer. This is like a second degree burn. If you burn a small part of your body, it will hurt, but the body will repair itself and you will continue to live. If you burn a large part of the body, you might die because the body is not strong enough to heal everything at once and the damaged portions become susceptible to infections and further damage.
Radiation can cause certain cancers, this is well established. However, radiation *does not* cause deformities. This is a Hollywood myth that has no basis in fact. Radiation damage will either kill you or shorten your life due to cancer. Radiation will not re-write your DNA or your unborn children’s DNA. Do bullets rearrange a complicated machine to turn it into something else? It’s not possible.
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