Nuclear Power And World Electricity Generation

Sir Arthur Eddington’s general address on subatomic energy at the 1930 World Power Conference in Berlin stirred the imagination of every scientist and engineer present. The challenge was clear: find a practical means of accessing, controlling, and using the enormous energy locked in the atom as predicted by Einstein’s remarkable mass–energy relation, E=mc2. On December 2, 1942, Enrico Fermi transformed Eddington’s visionary challenge into reality by producing the world’s first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear reactor, Chicago Pile 1. Six decades later, nuclear energy now produces 16% of the world’s electrical power. (more…)

Renewable Energy Sources In Europe: Environment, Nuclear Power Safety, Imported Energy


There are various and somewhat complementary reasons to foster the growth of renewable energy sources in Europe. A major incentive for renewable energy sources policies in the past two decades has been to reduce the environmental impact of energy use both locally (e.g., pollutant emission reduction) and globally (e.g., greenhouse gas and carbon emissions reduction). In some countries, concerns about the safety of nuclear power generation have motivated the search for renewable energy sources. Another motivation for replacing foreign fossil and nuclear fuels with domestic renewable energy sources relates to security issues and Europe’s growing dependency on foreign energy sources. (more…)

How Nuclear Power Plants Generate Nuclear Energy from Uranium

nuclear-power-plant
In the United States, Department of Energy has determined that nuclear power accounts for about 21% of the total electricity generated in the United States, an amount comparable to all the electricity used in California, Texas, and New York. In 2002, there were 65 nuclear power plants throughout the United States, located mostly on the East Coast and in the Midwest. (more…)