The inside of a power plant is a slight to behold indeed! As you can tell from these pictures that they are intricate with lots of details you can explore! How do they work? Basically, a power station is really a machine that extracts energy from a fuel. Some power stations burn fossil fuels such as coal, oil, or gas. Nuclear power stations produce energy by splitting apart atoms of heavy materials such as uranium and plutonium. The heat produced is used to convert water into steam at high pressure. This steam turns a windmill-like device called a turbine connected to an electricity generator. Extracting heat from a fuel takes place over a number of stages and some energy is wasted at each stage. That means power plants are not very efficient: in a typical plant running on coal, oil, or gas, only about 30-40 percent of the energy locked inside the fuel is converted to electricity and the rest is wasted.
As you can tell, Power plants are extremely interesting places! It's important to recognize the potential of nuclear power plants. A typical, old-fashioned coal power station is only about 35 percent efficient (it wastes about two thirds of the energy in each lump of coal), but new designs such as combined cycle power stations may be up to 50 percent efficient. Unlike in a traditional power station, hot exhaust gases produced in a combined cycle power station are not allowed to escape and waste energy, Instead, they are used to produce steam and drive a second turbine and generator. This design is up to 15 percent more efficient than a traditional power station. Combined heat and power (cogeneration) plants are another improved design, in which waste energy is used to heat hot water.
To sum up: nuclear power plants are the way of the future. They are more fuel efficient, more interesting by design, and modern power plants are safer than ever before. If you are interested, look for your nearest power plant!
