[Teacher317]

No, we do not. Nuclear reactors, on land and on shops, are used only to generate heat to boil water. The shed electrons from the radioactive materials are NOT harnessed to directly create electricity. We only use the heat from the chemical reaction between the materials.

[steve86]

You’ve got all kinds of things hopelessly confused.

[seowulf]

The heat comes from splitting nuclear bonds. Part of the energy is turned into heat, part into other types of radiation. The result of the fission is lots of fission products like various cesium isotopes.

You are very misinformed.

What you are thinking of perhaps is the kind of power generators on spacecraft which use decay heat as a power source.

[MarkL]

The shed electrons from the radioactive materials are NOT harnessed to directly create electricity.

Again, sorry but I have to disagree with you.

In nuclear reactors (and all radioactive elements,) neutrons, not electrons, are released due to atomic decay. When certain, other elements are struck by neutrons, they may absorb the neutrons (for instance, U235 can become U238, which is less stable, and becomes a more fissile materiel,) and when struct by neutrons, the nucleus breaks, forming other elements, in some cases "lighter," like Strontium, or heavier, like Plutonium. In either case, the fission of a heavy atom causes an exothermic reaction, which releases great amounts of electromagnetic radiation, which includes heat.

Again, I have to believe that, as a physicist, Einstein wouldn't have made a distinction of the type of energy released. And again, in the 1930s, it was widely believed that a nuclear chain reaction would be uncontrollable.

And not to place too find a point on it, the distinction you're making is akin to saying that we don't get electricity from coal or other fossil fuels. When they're burned, they generate heat, which is converted either to steam or mechanical energy, which then spin turbines, or in your car, the mechanical energy is created by the reciprocating pistons acting on the crankshaft, which by a belt, turns an alternator, generating electricity.

Mark

[chimera]

Most of the energy released in the fission reaction is expressed as kinetic energy of the fission fragments. Some is unrecoverable because of conservation of momentum and a smaller fraction is expressed by gamma emission and kinetic energy of prompt neutrons. The fission fragment kinetic energy is transferred to surrounding materials primarily through ionization, with the photoelectrons transferring their energy to other atoms. Eventually you get macroscopic effects (heat) which can be used to induce a phase change in the working fluid, as well as other things. So the starting point is the energy released in a nuclear reaction (fission), but the endpoint for common industrial uses is thermal energy. Chemical reactions, if they occur at all, are either a tertiary effect, such as radiolysis, or an endpoint use, such as heat for a petrochemical process.

One of my first jobs in my initial stint as a postdoc was to look at some of these other industrial uses of reactor-supplied heat and radiation. Some are familiar to the public, such as desalinization of seawater. Others are more exotic, such as neutron-induced doping of semiconductor materials.