Power Plants
This crucial part of a nuclear power plant is used to release heat from the reactor and cool the water used in the system.
What is the cooling tower?
This nuclear meltdown was initially triggered by an earthquake and a tsunami.
What is Fukushima?
This term describes nuclear energy due to the fact that radioactive elements are limited.
What is nonrenewable?
In a nuclear power plant, heat from nuclear fission is used to produce this, which drives turbines to generate electricity.
What is steam?
This term refers to the amount of time it takes for a quantity an unstable element to reduce to half of its initial value.
What is half-life?
They are used to slow down or stop the process of nuclear fission in a nuclear reactor.
What are control rods?
A term for radiation being carried over long distances, affecting ecosystems far from the meltdown site.
What is radiation spread?
These are the materials leftover from mining that may have radioactive elements that can contaminate water or soil nearby.
What are mine tailings?
Unlike fossil fuel plants, nuclear power plants do not release these while generating electricity.
What are greenhouse gases?
In nuclear fission, this subatomic particle must collide with the nucleus of an atom to cause the chain reaction that releases energy.
What is a neutron?
It is the radioactive isotope used in nuclear power plants.
What is Uranium-235?
Chernobyl melted down in this country due to a stuck cooling valve.
What is Ukraine?
It is the unintended presence of radioactive substances on surfaces, in liquids or gases, or within living organisms, posing potential health and environmental hazards.
What is radioactive contamination?
These carry the electricity from the power plants generator to substations.
What are transmission lines?
This type of graph is made when charting the half-life of an element.
What is exponential decay?
This is the term for the process in which the core of a nuclear reactor reaches a dangerously high temperature due to failure of cooling systems.
What is nuclear meltdown?
This United States nuclear meltdown released radiation but did not cause any deaths.
What is Three Mile Island?
One of the biggest challenges of nuclear energy is the long-term storage of this type of hazardous byproduct, which remains radioactive for thousands of years.
What is nuclear waste?
These objects inside the generator help induce an electric current by interacting with the spinning rotor.
What are magnets?
This electronic instrument is used for detecting and measuring ionizing radiation.
What is a Geiger counter?
This device converts the energy from the turbine into usable electricity.
What is the electric generator?
A nuclear meltdown occurs when this component of a nuclear reactor fails to keep the core temperature under control.
What is a cooling system?
Despite no air pollutants being generated when the electricity is generated, this part of the process still releases greenhouse gases.
What is uranium mining?
This term refers to the percentage of thermal energy from nuclear fission that is successfully converted into electrical energy in a nuclear power plant.
What is thermal efficiency?
This city was home to the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant.
What is Pennsylvania?