Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to re:What is REALLY scary

re: re:What is REALLY scary
gbaikie — (archived)

"1) How does a fission process generate heat?
2) Why does the fuel of a nuclear reactor increase its radioactivity by as much as million times while being burned in the reactor?
3) Does the heat from nuclear reactors escape the Earth at the same rate as it is created?"

1) In fission, matter is converted into energy.

2) If this can be answered [because the question may be poorly worded and may be inaccurate], because of the neutron emission of radioactive material- neutrons cause fission and fission creates neutrons- you can get a chain reaction.

3) Does the heat within reactor or surrounding area constantly increase?
If standing 100' from reactor and in a few hours it goes from 70-90F and than 8 hrs later is 60F, then it's not constantly increasing. There might be a more subtle increase such in average temperature- such as having wide swings in temperature, but say an average .001F increase per day, week, year, or whatever. If you carefully measure this and can't determine [because of the "noise" in the measurement] then you can't say it's constantly increasing, and therefore the answer is: yes, "the heat from nuclear reactors escape the Earth at the same rate as it is created"
This btw also is true of the Sun [roughly speaking].

Those are my simple answers. They are not intended as complete and detailed answers. Because one, you didn't ask for that and two, that would take more effort.
Of course I could be wrong and/or someone could explain it better.

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