Nuclear power plant facts for kids

A nuclear power station with two reactors.(Philippsburg, near Karlsruhe in Germany)

Nuclear power plant with a pressurized water reactor.

Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant memorial.

A nuclear power plant is a type of power station that generates electricity using heat from nuclear reactions. These reactions take place within a reactor. The plant also has machines which remove heat from the reactor to operate a steam turbine and generator to make electricity. Electricity made by nuclear power plants is called nuclear power.

Nuclear power plants are usually near water to remove the heat the reactor makes. Some nuclear power plants use cooling towers to do this. Nuclear power plants use uranium as fuel. When the reactor is on, uranium atoms inside the reactor split into two smaller atoms. When uranium atoms split, they give off a large amount of heat. This splitting of atoms is called fission.

The most popular atoms to fission are uranium and plutonium. Those atoms are slightly radioactive. The atoms produced when fuel atoms break apart are strongly radioactive. Today, fission only happens in nuclear reactors. In nuclear reactors, fission only happens when the reactors parts are arranged properly. Nuclear power plants turn their reactors off when replacing old nuclear fuel with new fuel.

There are about four hundred nuclear power plants in the world, with many in the United States, France, and Japan. Some famous accidents at nuclear power plants were the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine, and the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in the United States. There has been a recent debate about installing a nuclear power plant within Australia many people do not want this and many do want it, its been a highly controversial debate in the country

Images for kids

A Nuclear Power Station (Grafenrheinfeld Nuclear Power Plant, Grafenrheinfeld, Bavaria, Germany). The nuclear reactor is contained inside the spherical containment building in the center – left and right are cooling towers which are common cooling devices used in all thermal power stations, and likewise, emit water vapor from the non-radioactive steam turbine section of the power plant.
Bohunice Nuclear Power Plant in Jaslovské Bohunice in Slovakia.
The control room at an American nuclear power station
The Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, the largest nuclear power facility in the world
Nuclear reactors in operation releasing hot steam as a side product
The abandoned city of Prypiat, Ukraine, following the Chernobyl disaster. The Chernobyl nuclear power station is in the background.
The 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan, the worst nuclear accident in 25 years, displaced 50,000 households after radiation leaked into the air, soil and sea. Radiation checks led to bans of some shipments of vegetables and fish.