Tag: chemistry

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Announcing Chemunicate: Making Chemistry Research Easy to Understand

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Compound Interest has come a way since I started it back at the tail end of 2013. It’s now got almost 200,000 people following its posts on Facebook alone, there’s a book on some of the food chemistry graphics from the site, and plenty of other fun projects in the works too! The latest of these is Chemunicate: a new site side-project which I’m hoping to use to make chemical research easier to understand for chemists and non-chemists alike.

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30 Years Since Chernobyl – How Nuclear Reactors Work

Infographic on how nuclear reactors generate electricity. A schematic of the reactor is shown. Nuclear fission reactions generate hear which heats water and turns it into steam. The steam drives a turbine, spinning a generator and producing electricity. The steam condenses back into water and can be recycled through the reactor. The fission reactions involve uranium-235 atoms, which are split by neutrons to release energy and more neutrons which produce a chain reaction. Control rods control the reaction by absorbing neutrons, while moderators slow neutrons down so they can be absorbed by uranium atoms. Fission products remain radioactive for many years and must be stored safely.
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Early in the morning on 26 April 1986, a safety system test at the Chernobyl power plant in Pripyat, now part of Northern Ukraine, ended in a nuclear disaster with catastrophic consequences for both those working at the plant and those living in the surrounding area. The narrative seems to be a classic cautionary tale against the utilisation of nuclear reactors to generate power, but the reality is more nuanced. Here, we look at how nuclear reactors work generally, what led to the accident at Chernobyl 30 years ago, and the differences between Chernobyl and modern reactors.

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