A nuclear power plant is a thermal power station in which the heat source is a nuclear reactor. As in a conventional thermal power station the heat is used to generate steam which drives a steam turbine connected to a generator which produces electricity. As of February 2, 2012, there were 439 nuclear power plants in operation.
Nuclear power plants are usually considered to be base load stations, since fuel is a small part of the cost of production.
Read more about Nuclear Power Plant: History, Systems, People in A Nuclear Power Plant, Economics, Safety, Controversy, Reprocessing, Accident Indemnification, Decommissioning, Historic Accidents, Flexibility of Nuclear Power Plants, Future Power Plants
Famous quotes containing the words nuclear power, nuclear, power and/or plant:
“Language is as real, as tangible, in our lives as streets, pipelines, telephone switchboards, microwaves, radioactivity, cloning laboratories, nuclear power stations.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“The reduction of nuclear arsenals and the removal of the threat of worldwide nuclear destruction is a measure, in my judgment, of the power and strength of a great nation.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“For the first time in the history of mankind, one generation literally has the power to destroy the past, the present and the future, the power to bring time to an end.”
—Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978)
“It were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its colour and odour, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower—and this is the burthen of the curse of Babel.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)