Interesting Facts About Nuclear Power
- Nuclear power uses fission to create heat and electricity.
- Nuclear power provides around 14% of the worlds energy.
- The radioactive waste produced by nuclear reactors is very difficult to dispose of safely.
- In August 1945, near the end of World War 2, the United States used atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki leading to the deaths of approximately 200,000 people.
- The sun creates energy through the nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium.
- There are still some 26,000 nuclear warheads in the world, enough to destroy civilization and mankind many times over.
- There are currently nine countries that possess nuclear weapons (U.S, Russia, UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea)
- In 1905, Einstein discovered that mass could be converted into energy and vice versa. In 1918, Sir Ernest Rutherford showed that atoms could be split. By 1942, the world had its first nuclear reactor.
- While nuclear power plants themselves do not create carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, or nitrogen oxides, the mining, enrichment and transportation of uranium generates harmful fossil fuel byproducts.
- Globally, there are over 430 commercial nuclear power reactors in over 31 countries.
- The peace symbol was initially an anti-nuclear weapons symbol.
- The sun produces an enormous amount of energy from its nuclear reactions that change hydrogen into helium. In the process, the sun loses over 4 million tons of mass every second.
Image of the destruction at Hiroshima,1945. It was caused by a nuclear bomb.