contaminated food. The Chernobyl plant did not have the massive containment structure common to most nuclear power plants elsewhere in the world. Nuclear power plants generate only about eleven percent of the world electricity. There are around 316 nuclear power plants in the world that create 213,000 megawatts of electricity. (pg 18 Aron ) Shoreham was a low-pressure boiling water reactor. It was the same kind of nuclear reactor that has been producing electricity in Millstone, Connecticut since the late 1980s. Here are the steps of how Shoreham would have made electricity. Nuclear fission occurs when atoms nucleus split and cause a nuclear reaction. When a free neutron splits a nucleus, energy is released along with free neutrons, fission fragments that give off beta rays, and gamma rays. A free neutron from the nucleus that just split splits another nucleus. This process continues on and is called a chain reaction. (World Book vol. 14, 588) The fission process is used to create heat, which boils water inside the nuclear reactor. The steam that boiling the water makes is used to turn turbines, which in turn, generate electricity. Fission happens inside a carefully monitored nuclear reactor core. The core in the Shoreham plant was made of ceramic fuel pellets. Which is different from the unstable graphite core used in Cherynobyl. Nuclear and oil plants work the same way except for the heat source. One of the concerns for Long Islanders was that Shoreham could be used as a bomb or would just spontaneously combust. The truth is that commercial nuclear power plants are designed to control fission reactions. The nature uranium fuel that are used in a commercial power plant make it chemically impossible for a plant to explode like a bomb. (Shoreham safety report) To create a chain reaction, that would be required for a nuclear explosion. The natural uranium would ha...
