Re:U.S. Reenters the Nuclear Fuel Game
by tuatoru on Tuesday November 14, 2023 @10:02PM
(#38272816)
It's never sounded futuristic to me. Nuclear just boils water to make steam, the same as James Watt's steam engine. (Well, actually, steam turbines, but still pretty old technology.) Boiling water to make electricity? How quaint.
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Slight tangent: radioisotope thermoelectric generators use a different mechanism to generate electricity.
Though honestly, they just heat some pieces of metal, instead of heating water.
Photovoltaic heats a bunch of hydrogen ions until they glow. (But those ions are in the sun.) Wind power mostly comes from air and water being heated unevenly.
Tidal power is perhaps the coolest here: no heat involved, the energy comes from the motion of the earth and the moon.