Nuclear energy

N uclear ener gy The EXPLOSIVE POWER of the a tom

Nuclear technology releases the energy locked inside atoms. The power this generates could one day take spaceships beyond our Solar System.

Did you know? Another type of nuclear reaction fuses nuclei together. Nuclear fusion could provide safe, clean, and almost limitless electricity here on Earth.

Project Orion was a 1950s design for a nuclear spacecraft.

Nuclear rockets

In the future, nuclearpowered rockets could take us to the stars. The farther away from the Sun a rocket goes, the less useful solar panels become, while traditional rocket fuels weigh a lot and run out quickly. Nuclear energy produces much more propulSioN power than traditional rocket fuels, so scientists are looking to nuclear power as a way to travel farther into space than ever before.

It paved the way for…

Nuclear weapoNs

were developed in the 1940s. Two fissioN bombs were dropped on Japan in 1945, with devastating consequences. The first Nuclear

power plaNt began generating electricity in 1954 in obNiNsk, outside Moscow, in modern-day Russia.

Future nuclearpowered rockets could one day take humans to Mars.

Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn in their German laboratory in 1913.

By 1900, scientists knew that everything is made from tiny particles called atoms. In 1909, New Zealand–born scientist

Ernest Rutherford showed that atoms have a central nucleus, orbited by smaller particles called electrons. Later, discoveries by Rutherford and

English physicist James Chadwick identified protons and neutrons, which make up the nucleus of an atom.

Neutron

Proton

Nuclear fission

The powER of atoms was unleashed in 1938 by scientists Lise meitner, otto Hahn, and fritz strassman: They split the nucleus of a uranium atom by firing neutrons at it. As the nucleus split, some of its mass was converted into heat, a process that became known as nuclear fission. Enrico Fermi, an Italian scientist living in the United States, headed the team that created the first controlled fission CHain REaCtion in the world’s first nuclear reactor.

How it changedNuclear power already drives some power plants, submarines, and ships. In the future, nuclear-powered spacecraft could carry human beings farther into space than ever before. the world.

HOW Nuclear fission works by splitting atoms. Some nuclei of IT WO R Neutron Uranium-235 nucleus KS uranium-235 naturally split in two, The atom is releasing neutrons. Some of the split in two. neutrons hit other uranium-235 nuclei, causing them to split, releasing energy and more neutrons, which in turn hit more uranium atoms. This self-sustaining process is called a chain reaction. Neutrons released bombard other uranium-235 nuclei.

USS Nautilus, the first nUclear-powered SUbmarine, was launched in 1954. The icebreaker leNiN was the

first nUclear SUrface Ship.

Getting

The modern world is in constant contact thanks to this bunch of groundbreaking technology. Whether we’re reading the latest news on the Internet, chatting on the phone, or singing along to the radio, our methods of staying in tune and keeping in touch are the result of mind-boggling inventions that put us all on the same wavelength.

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