Nuclear energy is released by the splitting (fission) or merging together (fusion) of the nuclei of atom(s .

World’s First Nuclear Power Plant

The first nuclear power plant has been built in Russia or Soviet Union as it was called at that times. It has been built in high hush-hush mode, even the construction workers on site

didn’t know what exactly they were doing there.Then on June 27th, 1954 Russian radio stations knocked over their listeners across the vast country and worldwide

when they broadcasted the news like “In Soviet Union, thanks to the joint effort of scientists and engineers the

construction of the world’s first nuclear power plant with an output power of 5000 kW. The power plant construction has been completed and already produced electricity for the local

Soviet agricultural objects”.

The Modern Russian Power

Plant

How It Works – The Scientific Process Behind Nuclear Energy

Nuclear energy relies on the fact that some elements can be split (in a process called fission) and will release part of their

energy as heat. Because it fissions easily, Uranium-235 (U-235) is one of the

elements most commonly used to produce nuclear energy. It is generally used in a mixture with Uranium-238, and produces

Plutonium-239 (Pu-239) as waste in the process. A nuclear power plant generates electricity like any other steam-electric power plant. Water is heated, and steam from the boiling

water turns turbines and generates electricity. The main difference in the various types of steam-electric plants

is the heat source. Coal, oil, or gas is burned in other power plants to heat the water. Heat from a chain reaction of fissioning

Uranium-235 boils the water in a nuclear power plant. Some have compared this process to using a canon to kill a fly.

Advantages & Disadvantagesof Nuclear Energy

ADVANTAGES:

Nuclear energy tackles 3 of the greatest problems humanity has encountered in its struggle to get energy.

a) Nuclear power plants don't require a lot of space.

b) It doesn't pollute (it does, but in a very different way... more

about it further on.)

c) Nuclear energy is by far the most concentrated form of energy.

DISADVANTAGES:

• One of the main disadvantages of nuclear energy is that nuclear explosions produce radiation, this radiation harms the cells of the

body which can make humans sick or even cause them death. Illness can appear or strike people years after they were exposed

to nuclear radiation.• A possible type of reactor disaster is known as a meltdown. In a

meltdown, the fission reaction of an atom goes out of control, which leads to a nuclear explosion releasing great amounts of

radiation.Here are some examples of meltdowns that have happened

through history::• In 1979, at the Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the cooling system of a nuclear reactor failed. Radiation escaped, forcing tens of thousands of people to run away. Fortunately the problem was solved minutes before a total meltdown would have

occurred, and there were no deaths.

• In 1986, a much worse disaster hit Russia's Chernobyl nuclear power plant. In this incident, a large amount of radiation escaped from the reactor. Hundreds of thousands of people were exposed to the radiation. Several dozen died within a few days. In the upcoming years, thousands more may die of cancers induced by the radiation.

• Reactors produce nuclear waste products which emit dangerous radiation, because they could kill people who touch them, they

cannot be thrown away like ordinary garbage. Nowadays, lots of nuclear wastes are stored in special cooling pools at the nuclear

plants.• The USA plans to move all its nuclear was to an isolated

underground dump by the year 2010.• In 1957,nuclear wastes buried at a dump site in Russia’s Ural

Mountains, near Moscow, mysteriously exploded. This caused the death of dozens of people

DO YOU THINK THERE IS A NUCLEAR

POWER PLANT IN THE PHILIPPINES?

Nuclear Energy in The Philippines

Philippines: Bataan nuclear plant costs $155,000 a day but no power

• NEARLY 30 years after work began on the Bataan nuclear power plant just north of Manila, Filipino taxpayers are still paying 155,000 dollars a day in interest on a structure that has never produced one watt of power.

• Thelmo Cunanan, chief executive of state-run Philippine National Oil Co., said it had become the country's most outstanding white elephant.

• "The fact that we are still paying interest on a project that is 30 years old and has not produced a watt of electricity should send at least one positive signal to the investment community," he told Agence France-Presse in a telephone interview.

• The signal was that "If we enter an agreement at least we pay our bills. There were times when I thought: why should we? Why don't we simply turn our backs and walk away from it but that is not the way we Filipinos do business."

• The Bataan nuclear power plant was a knee jerk reaction by former Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos to the energy crisis of the early 1970s.

• The oil embargo had put a heavy strain on the economy and Marcos saw nuclear power as the best way forward in terms of meeting the country's future power needs and lessening the nation's reliance on imported oil.

• Construction began in 1976 and was completed in 1984 at a cost of 2.3 billion dollars.

• The power station, 60 miles (97 kilometres) north of Manila, has been the centre of controversy from the day construction began.

• When Marcos was overthrown by the so-called People Power Revolution in early 1986 a team of international inspectors visited the site and declared it unsafe and inoperable as it was built near major earthquake fault lines and near the Pinatubo volcano which at the time was dormant.

• The first post-Marcos government of Corazon Aquino sealed the nuclear plant's fate for good when it banned the use of nuclear power and enshrined it into the Constitution.

• Debt repayment on the plant is the country's biggest single obligation.• Successive governments have looked at ways of converting the plant into

an oil, coal, or gas-fired power station.• According to Cunanan a South Korean company recently expressed an

interest in taking over the nuclear power station and developing it as a commercial operation. But the provision in the constitution ruled it out.

• Cunanan said it would be unfair to name the company but said the government has not ruled out converting the plant into a fossil fuel power station.

• Some studies in the past have shown that converting the plant may be too expensive.

• The plant itself has been maintained despite never having been commissioned.

• A Westinghouse light water reactor, it was designed to produce some 621 megawatts of electricity.

• Much of the technology used in the plant was early 1970s but modified following the Three Mile Island accident in the United States in 1979.