Inside a nuclear reactor core - Bang Goes The Theory - BBC

a big problem I find with nuclear power stations is the sheer scale of them makes them a little confusing but honestly it all just boils down to this you've got yourself a nuclear reactor here it's kind of like a kettle except the waters not heated by electricity it's heated by nuclear fuel rods boiling water produces steam the steam comes down a pipe and there it impacts on a turbine which is essentially a bunch of spoons on a spindle that produces electricity and hey presto you've got yourself a happy town the thing that makes a nuclear power station different from a conventional one is how the water is heated to form steam and to see that I need to go into the reactor core itself [Music] this is the heart of a nuclear reactor and not many people get to stand here because when active all of this would be at around 300 degrees Celsius and under a similar pressure - you'd find half a mile below the ocean pushing these walls apart with a force of around 40,000 tons but where is all the energy coming from to do that it's coming from down here [Music] these and nuclear fuel assemblies now if operational this small space would be packed with over a hundred of these each giving out vast amounts of energy in the form of heat and that's because every one of these square metal tubes would be packed with thousands of little pellets like this the pellets are made of uranium oxide and uranium it's very special to us because it's an atom we can split when things break apart they tend to release the energy stored in whatever was holding them together now it doesn't matter whether that's an atom or a stretched elastic band like this one so I'm gonna come in split it and what I end up with is two smaller high-energy elements flying off in opposite directions now when that's an atom those two smash into their surroundings warming things up big difference is no matter how small your scissors they're not the tool for splitting an atom to do that you need a small particle called a neutron now when this hits the very center of a uranium atom it can get absorbed causing the atom to become unstable and split but as well as releasing all that energy you also release two or three more neutrons that can then fly off into the surroundings causing more trouble thing is that's still not really enough to sustain a nuclear reaction because uranium atoms don't absorb neutrons that easily the neutrons need to be going at just the right speed and for that this whole reactor needs one more thing just add water the water plays a pivotal role because it slows down those little neutrons to a speed where they're much more likely to be absorbed by nearby uranium atoms causing them to become unstable and release more energy and more neutrons in a continuous cascade now if you can keep this sustainable you've gone critical which is a good thing because then you're generating heat sufficiently quickly to run a power station

Channel: BBC Studios

Views: 3,347,647

Rating: 4.8194723 out of 5

Keywords: BBC, BBC Worldwide, Bang Goes The Theory, Science, theories, Jem Stansfield, reactor core, zwentendorf, nuclear power plant, nuclear power station, nuclear power, steam, reactor, high pressure, turbine, generator, electricity, fuel rods, water heated, energy, nuclear fuel assemblies, urainium oxide, atoms, split atom, particle, neutron, water, Nuclear Reactor Core

Id: MGj_aJz7cTs

Length: 3min 52sec (232 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 21 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/sor1]

So how can he stand in there? Poweplant was built, it was the first one and political pressure forced a national Referendum that barely went anti nuclear power. It never received fuel. And a few years later Austria banned nuclear power per constitutional law.

It’s the biggest investment ruin in austria, at least they make Money by Hosting trainings (it’s a German design, so mostly for technicians of those companies) and camera Crews. During fukushima it was like a 100 tv Crews a week.

Oh, and Austrian military cadets train object Security there.