Chapelcross Nuclear Power Station

This is the last post in our series of posts on nuclear energy.  Here, I shall describe the basic principles behind the design and continued operation of a nuclear reactor.  In our last post, we looked at the techniques responsible for making fissile matter release energy as quickly as possible (in a nuclear explosion).  Today, we will instead look at techniques to control nuclear fission reactions and usefully harness the resultant energy.  Since there are a variety of various nuclear reactor designs and fuels, I shall stick to talking about a reasonably common (although a bit aged) design known as the pressurized-water reactor using U-235 fuel.

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