Nuclear power is a type of nuclear technology involving the controlled use of nuclear fission to release

energy for work including propulsion, heat, and the generation of electricity. Nuclear energy is produced by a
controlled nuclear chain reaction and creates heatwhich is used to boil water, produce steam, and drive a steam
turbine. The turbine can be used for mechanical work and also to generate electricity.
One of the major requirements for sustaining human progress is an adequate source of energy. The current
largest sources of energy are the combustion of coal, oil and natural gas. These are discussed in the main page on
energy. They will last quite a while but will probably run out or become harmful in tens to hundreds of years. Solar
energy will also work but is not much developed yet except for special applications because of its high cost. This high
cost as a main source, e.g. for central station electricity, is likely to continue, and nuclear energy is likely to remain
cheaper. A major advantage of nuclear energy is that it doesn't put carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. How
much of an advantage depends on how bad the CO2 problem turns out to be.
Nuclear power can come from the fission of uranium, plutonium or thorium or the fusion of hydrogen into
helium. Today it is almost all uranium. The basic energy fact is that the fission of an atom of uranium produces 10
million times the energy produced by the combustion of an atom of carbon from coal. Natural uranium is almost
entirely a mixture of two isotopes, U-235 and U-238. U-235 cans fission in a reactor, and U-238 can't to a significant
extent. Natural uranium is 99.3 percent U-238 and 0.7 percent U-235.
Nuclear fission was first experimentally achieved by Enrico Fermi in 1934 when his team bombarded
uranium with neutrons. In 1938, German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, along with Austrian physicists
Lise Meitner and Meitner's nephew, Otto Robert Frisch, conducted experiments with the products of neutronbombarded uranium. They determined that the relatively tiny neutron split the nucleus of the massive uranium
atoms into two roughly equal pieces, which was a surprising result. Numerous scientists, including Leo Szilard who
was one of the first, recognized that if fission reactions released additional neutrons, a self-sustaining nuclear chain
reaction could result. This spurred scientists in many countries to petition their government for support of nuclear
fission research.
In the United States, where Fermi and Szilard had both emigrated, this led to the creation of the first manmade reactor, known as Chicago Pile-1, which achieved criticality on December 2, 1942. This work became part of
the Manhattan Project, which built large reactors at the Hanford Site to breed plutonium for use in the first nuclear
weapons. A parallel uranium enrichment effort also was pursued. Electricity was generated for the first time by a
nuclear reactor on December 20, 1951 at the EBR-I experimental station near Arco, Idaho, which initially produced
about 100 kW. On June 27, 1954, the USSRs Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant became the world's first nuclear power
plant to generate electricity for a power grid, and produced around 5 megawatts electric power. The world's first
commercial nuclear power station, Calder Hall in Sellafield, England was opened in 1956 with an initial capacity of 50
MW later 200 MW.
Proponents of nuclear energy aver that nuclear power is a sustainable energy source that reduces carbon
emissions and increases energy security by decreasing dependence on foreign oil. Proponents also claim that the
risks of storing waste are small and can be further reduced by the technology in the new reactors and the
operational safety record is already good when compared to the other major kinds of power plants.
Critics claim that nuclear power is an uneconomic and potentially dangerous energy source with a limited
fuel supply, and dispute whether the costs and risks can be reduced through new technology. Critics also point to the
problem of storing radioactive waste, the potential for possibly severe radioactive contamination by accident or
sabotage, the possibility of nuclear proliferation and the disadvantages of centralized electrical production
The primary environmental impacts of nuclear power include Uranium mining, radioactive effluent
emissions, direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions (water vapor, CO2, NO2) and waste heat. Nuclear generation
does not directly produce sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury or other pollutants associated with the

combustion of fossil fuels. Other issues include disposal of nuclear waste, with high level waste proposed to go in
deep geological repositories and nuclear decommissioning.
Nuclear proliferation is the spread of nuclear weapons and related technology to nations not recognized as
"Nuclear Weapon States" by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Since the days of the Manhattan Project it has
been known that reactors could be used for weapons-development purposesthe first nuclear reactors were
developed for exactly this reasonas the operation of a nuclear reactor converts U-238 into plutonium. As a
consequence, since the 1950s there have been concerns about the possibility of using reactors as a dual-use
technology, whereby apparently peaceful technological development could serve as an approach to nuclear
weapons capability.
To prevent weapons proliferation, safeguards on nuclear technology were published in the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty (NPT) and monitored since 1968 by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Nations
signing the treaty are required to report to the IAEA what nuclear materials they hold and their location. They agree
to accept visits by IAEA auditors and inspectors to verify independently their material reports and physically inspect
the nuclear materials concerned to confirm physical inventories of them in exchange for access to nuclear materials
and equipment on the global market.
So keeping in mind the advantages and disadvantages of nuclear power we cannot say that in future we will
meet all our energy requirements with nuclear energy and nuclear power plants. As long as we keep in mind the
increasing requirements of energy of our growing economy the only way to keep it in increasing trend is to use the
nuclear power more and more because it is cheaper then solar energy. But its disadvantages leads us in the decision
that we should keep limited its uses because the waste produced during creation of energy by using nuclear sours is
very dangerous for all humanity. And its side effects remain for hundreds of years. The threat of making and using
nuclear weapons also prevents us to use nuclear power plants to produce electric energy.