kumar ideology

Nuclear Power Plant - What is it? A nuclear power plant is a facility for obtaining electrical energy using nuclear energy. Its operation is similar to that of a thermal power plant or that of a solar thermal plant: from a source of energy thermodynamics is used to obtain heat, with the heat to get steam and with the steam to drive a turbine that will generate electricity. The difference between the different types of electrical installations is in the energy source: a nuclear power plant uses the heat released in the nuclear fission reactions of certain atoms, in a thermal power station the heat source (thermal energy) comes from the combustion of one or more fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, fuel ...). Finally in thermoelectric solar plants, the source of energy is solar radiation. As in a conventional thermal power plant the heat is used to generate steam that drives a steam turbine connected to a generator tha...

Thermal Power Plants Thermal power plants use water as working fluid. Nuclear and coal based power plants fall under this category. The way energy from fuel gets transformed into electricity forms the working of a power plant. In a thermal power plant a steam turbine is rotated with help of high pressure and high temperature steam and this rotation is transferred to a generator to produce electricity. Fig.1 Power is produced in thermal power plants by rotating steam turbine Energy absorption from steam When turbine blades get rotated by high pressure high temperature steam, the steam loses its energy. This in turn will result in a low pressure and low temperature steam at the outlet of the turbine. Here steam is expanded till saturation point is reached. Since there is no heat addition or removal from the steam, ideally entropy of the steam remains same. This change is depicted in the following p-v and T-s diagrams. If we can bring this low pressure, low temperature st...