The Big Ones: How Natural Disasters Have Shaped Us (and What We Can Do About Them)

by Lucy Jones

Nuclear power plants harness the huge amount of heat generated by the splitting of the nuclei of large atoms, like those that make up uranium. This heat is used to create steam, which in turn is used to drive electric turbines and create the energy many of us consume in our daily lives. But the heat created in these nuclear reactions needs to be managed, to be drawn away from the nuclear fuel, or else we risk it melting, which will cause the vessel that contains the fuel to explode. So nuclear fuel is kept in circulating water to dissipate its heat. As a consequence, nuclear power plants are always built near major water sources, often the ocean, to facilitate cooling. Additionally, they have redundant backup power systems to make sure the heat management systems don’t fail.