(5) The generator’s spinning coil – located inside the N-S axis of magnets – converts mechanical energy to electrical energy.

The final four steps of this process are common to many types of electricity generation; only the first step, the source of heat, differs. But this is where the trouble lies.

Seeking to understand the basics of nuclear fission, I learn how Uranium’s elemental energy becomes heat. And I also learn of the serious environmental and human-health related consequences to boiling water this way.

Uranium is one of the ninety-two stable, naturally occurring elements, of which all matter is composed; it has 92 protons. In the vast majority of cases the nucleus of an atom of Uranium has 146 neutrons, but in some cases (a bit less than 1%), the nucleus has only 143 neutrons; the former is called U-238, the later U-235. The more abundant U-238 has a nucleus which is held together by the strong force (a fundamental force of physics), in a very stable configuration. In contrast, U-235 has a nucleus where the strong force is susceptible to being destabilized when it captures a moving neutron. A U-235 nucleus which is destabilized in this way decays into two or more parts – this is fission – and the resulting parts contain less total energy than the original U-235 atom. Most of the balance of the energy is kinetic in nature, which in a solid fuel can move only a very short distance before becoming heat. This is the heat that boils the water in the second step of the five-step process.