Nuclear Energy

Nuclear energy can provide a low-carbon source of electricity, meaning it does not release carbon dioxide gas into the atmosphere. Unlike most renewable energy, which varies depending on the weather, nuclear energy can operate day or night, reliably and predictably.

In 1897, British physicist JJ Thomson used a cathode-ray tube to help him discover the electron. This was the first sub-atomic particle to be found, heralding the birth of atomic science. 

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In the first decades of the twentieth century, scientists came to better understand the structure of atoms, with the now-iconic image of the atom, with a nucleus at its centre surrounded by orbiting electrons, emerging in the 1920s. This greater understanding of the structure of atoms helped scientists, such as Hungarian-born physicist Leo Szilard, to conceive of the nuclear ‘chain reaction’. This is a process whereby a neutron – another sub-atomic particle – could be fired into the nucleus of a heavy element such as uranium, splitting it apart, releasing huge amounts of energy, and also releasing more neutrons to repeat the same process in nearby atoms.

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The Second World War accelerated atomic research, culminating in the nuclear fission bombs dropped over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States in 1945, with devastating effects.

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After the war, the power of the atom for more peaceful purposes was promoted, although research was still directed primarily towards military use.

Nevertheless, the applications for electricity generation were apparent and a burgeoning nuclear energy industry was kick-started in the UK with Calder Hall power station. This was a dual-use facility, providing the British military with plutonium for its nuclear weapons programme, whilst at the same time becoming the first commercial power-generating nuclear reactor in the world, providing electricity from nuclear fission to the national grid in 1956.

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Momentum grew and for some, nuclear energy for the masses seemed just around the corner.

Nuclear fusion for energy production is much harder to achieve. Just one year after Calder Hall started generating electricity for the national grid, in 1957 a team of British scientists at the UK’s Atomic Energy Research Establishment in Harwell, Oxfordshire, announced to the world that they had successfully fused hydrogen atoms together into helium, releasing energy in the process. The fusion machine they created, the Zero Energy Thermonuclear Assembly, or ZETA, became world famous, but later recalculations showed that fusion reactions had not taken place. 

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Wikipedia Commons Image source for ZETA nuclear fusion experiment seen from above, 1957.

However, much was learned from ZETA, with newer, more advanced experiments taking up the fusion challenge. Today’s reactors have achieved nuclear fusion, but there are still several key challenges to overcome before commercial fusion power plants become a reality, including finding the best materials to cope with the extreme conditions inside a fusion reactor. From ZETA to today's largest fusion experiments, such as the International Thermonuclear Reactor known as ITER in the south of France, one day fusion energy might indeed provide electricity ‘too cheap to meter’.

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From the 1950s to today, the world's relationship with nuclear energy has been a love-hate one. The promise of a ‘clean’ and reliable way of generating electricity has been broken by several high-profile disasters, such as the Windscale Piles fire in Britain, Three Mile Island in the United States, Fukushima in Japan and, most famously, the Chernobyl reactor meltdown in 1986, in the former Soviet Union. 

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Despite these disasters, nuclear energy as a means of generating electricity has endured, with many countries around the world continuing to invest in nuclear power. And with the harmful effects of carbon dioxide emissions released from burning fossil fuels in traditional power stations being felt more and more around the world, nuclear energy could find a renewed role as a means of providing low-carbon electricity whatever the weather.

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Conventional nuclear power stations are usually big, expensive and take many years to construct and prepare for operation. But by making them smaller and modular in design, nuclear plants could be prefabricated in factories and transported by road to new sites for assembly. These ‘small modular reactors’, or SMRs, could be sited in locations not suited to traditional nuclear power stations and may open up opportunities for low-carbon electricity generation to more people. However, they may generate more waste per unit of power compared with larger nuclear power stations, more security would be needed for an increased number of sites and the designs are far from proven. 

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There are many factors to weigh up when considering the role of nuclear energy in a low-carbon future. From size, speed, cost, safety, security, reliability, emissions, waste and more, the trade-offs are hard to balance and can come down to personal values and ethics. 

To find out more about all of these stories, and more, visit Energy Revolution: The Adani Green Energy Gallery.