Need for Power

Power stations supply power to telephone network, stock markets and industrial equipment, everything from semiconductors to petrochemicals.

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Storage

Capture and storage reduces required generated power. Those technologies will improve the performance of renewable energy power generation. A good example is carbon dioxide capture.

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Clean Coal

Power stations are converted to clean coal technology. In some cases this technology can only reduce emissions by 20 %.

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Waste Plants

The latest technique converts waste to gas which is used to generate heat that will produce steam. The waste consists of post recycling material. This technique is used in gasification plant on Isle of Wight in UK. The aim of the project is to generate electricity from half of 60,000 tones of waste that is processed by the Island Waste Services resource recover facility, in 2008.

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Nuclear Power

Fission Process and Chain Reaction - Uranium consists as least three isotopes: 238U (99.27 %) - 146 neutrons, 235U (0.72 %) - 143 neutrons and 234U (0.0055%) - 142 neutrons. The first and the second isotope can produce a fusion reaction. Specific energy levels are required for each of the two isotopes. Uranium nucleus splits into barium and krypton when it absorbs a neutron. Spare neutrons that are not captured by new elements are released as 'free' neutrons [3]. Those neutrons are captured by nuclei of close atoms where they can start another fusion. The fission process my or might not produce free electron. On average there is 1 free electron for 238U fission and 2.5 free electrons for 235U fission. A 'self sustaining' reaction is where at least one of the neutrons from each fission is absorbed by a 235U nucleus to initiate another fission in a 'chain reaction'.

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Production Reactors - Production reactor was made to produce plutonium and has nothing to do with production of electricity.

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Graphite Reactors - The first British reactors in Windscale, Northwest of England were made to produce plutonium. The production of plutonium-239 was optimised by the choice of core geometry. Carbon dioxide is used for cooling. Heat produced by fission reaction, extracted from core and is used to generate electricity. In other reactors that were made, fuel channels where vertical not horizontal.

Magnox Reactor - The reactor is called "Magnox", that is the name of material used for 'cladding' or skin of fuel element. It is an alloy of magnesium that has higher melting point than previously used aluminium.

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Advanced Gas Reactor (AGR) - In Advanced Gas Reactors (AGR) were designed to produce more heat and thus more power. The fraction of uranium-235 in the uranium dioxide fuel is increased by 2 % to reduce the neutron absorption of stainless steel cladding and thus increase the speed of chain reaction.

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RBMK (high-power channel reactor) - RBMK is a Russian reactor that stands for Reaktor Bolshoi Moshchnosty Kanalny (high-power channel reactor). The cylindrical graphite core is 7 m high and 12 m in diameter. There are 1,700 pressure tubes inside. Similarly to AGR, the concentration of uranium-235 is increased by 2 %. Water is used to cool the 290ºC high pressure tubes. Eight coolant loops are used. After the coolant leaves the core it passes through steam separator, that drives the power turbine. The coolant then flows back intro the loop. The reactor is inside stainless steel encasement filled with helium and nitrogen to maintain inert temperature of 600ºC around the graphite core. There are 200 boron carbide absorber rods and 24 of those are used for emergency protection.

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High-temperature gas reactor - This reactor uses graphite as moderator and helium as coolant. The plant efficiency is 39 %.

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Solar Power

Solar panel are expensive due to the energy and quality required for production. Solar power is fitted to homes and spare power only is taken from the local transformer when the solar panel cannot meet the house hold demand, thus almost eliminating the need for distributed system power supply. However, solar panels might not be able to generate enough power for industries and large buildings.