Chapter 5 Essay Question and News Article Part A What is the purpose of a nuclear reactor How does it work What are the potential dangers Give historical examples Are there things that many people think are true about the reactors that in Muller s analysis are not A nuclear reactor is able to not only produce but control the release of energy from the splitting of atoms It is able to provide electricity by heating water which turns into steam that them spins turbines that produces electricity The purpose of it is exactly that to control the energy released from fission of uranium There are many potential dangers that come with nuclear reactors What if something goes wrong in the experiment It is not an option to simply shut down the machine right when needed because of the intense pressure and heat that is being used Radioactive gasses are produced during this process and while there is equipment that has been designed to prevent any gasses from being released there is always a potential of something going wrong An example of nuclear reactor gone wrong is the Fukushima plant in Japan on March 11 2011 An earthquake rattled the area and at first everything seemed to be fine in the power plant The set of control were still functioning normally but power was lost Normally back up generators would be used but a tsunami along with the earthquake destroyed the backup generators While the fission had stopped the pressure and heat used to do this still needed to be controlled until it subsided A temporary fix was trying to be used to help cool everything down but failed This led to an explosion in the plant Another more famous example was the Chernobyl disaster This happened on April 26 1986 in the Ukraine This explosion occurred during a late night safety test where backup would be needed in case of a blackout but the safety systems had been turned off as well There was an uncontrolled reaction within the flawed system and lead to a graphite fire that produced an explosion While the explosion itself was severe it was the lasting effects from it that negatively impacted the city around it Radioactivity was emitted all around the plant and has had ongoing effects on the population Some workers within died from the initial explosion and some the public workers that helped put the power plant fire out also lost their life but most have been indirectly affected from the lingering radioactivity There are a couple of things people believed to be true about nuclear reactors that have been proven to be wrong in Muller s analysis One thing that is misconceived is that if there is an explosion of a machine it would be like a nuclear bomb this is not true While the damage would be bad it wouldn t be a catastrophic as everyone would think because there was not as much U235 was used Another mistake people make when thinking about reactors is that there is no safe controlled place to store the nuclear waste from the experiments This has been proven wrong because scientists have insured that the waste stored in the Yucca Mountain located in Nevada will be safe for 10 000 years There are many obstacles that have to been used when dealing with anything nuclear but it has far greater uses for our plant than it does dangers Part B Find and read an article on physics or technology from some serious website Give the link to the article and summarize the article drawing connections to class and or explaining what you do not understand about the article Trying to measure certain materials in magnetics fields at very low temperature like absolute zero is known to be difficult but a recent discovery could now make it easier Recently a method has been developed to measure magnetic properties of superconducting and magnetic materials at very low temperatures in high magnetic fields A scientist at the U S Department of Energy s Ames Laboratory who uses this method has just discovered how to study quantum behavior superconductivity and phase transitions within different materials This new method is able to be used by putting a tunnel diode resonator which is a scientific device that is able to make precise radio frequency measurements for different magnetic properties in a dilution refrigerator A dilution refrigerator is a machine that is able to cool down samples of things to around temperatures of absolute zero This has been done before but this is the first time it was able to be applied to large static magnetic fields which is a breakthrough because this is vital for studying any quantum materials Part A Nosowitz Dan How Nuclear Reactors Work And How They Fail Popular Science Popular Science 14 Mar 2011 www popsci com science article 2011 03 whats happeningjapans nuclear power plants page 2 Part B Ames Laboratory Pushing the Extra Cold Frontiers of Superconducting Science Phys org News and Articles on Science and Technology Phys org 18 Oct 2018 phys org news 2018 10 extra cold frontiers superconducting science html
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