by Rick Badman

Created on: June 07, 2009

For most of my life I have considered nuclear energy the best source of energy available. I still do. It is relatively compact, powerful, and abundant, to some extent. Once we learn how to use nuclear waste to generate electricity, we may have an energy source that will last us virtually forever.

There are and will be various types of reactors and nuclear energy systems that are being used and might be used in the future. The first type of reactor is the light-water reactor. The safest ones use superheated steam created by water that flows through the fuel rod bundles which heat a second source of water that is heated to above boiling to turn turbines connected to the generators. They are used around the world to generate over 300 gigawatts of electricity annually. Included in light-water reactors are the boiling water reactors that use one source of water which flows through the fuel core and becomes superheated. The water that flows by the turbines is radioactive and is dangerous if it leaks from the steam pipes.

The reactors are called light-water because they use regular water as opposed to the heavy-water reactors that use deuterium and are more expensive. Most of the reactors used around the world are light-water reactors with France receiving over 70% of its electricity from them and most of the submarines in our Navy and the aircraft carriers use the reactors too since they don't have to be refueled for years.

In the future, there may be various types of reactors that will be safer, more efficient, and at times more powerful even when they are smaller than existing reactors. One such reactor is the injection reactor. It uses a charged particle beam system to accelerate the nuclear decay in the fuel tubes to emit positive, negative, and neutrally charged particles. The positive and negative ones are cyceled through the reactor to maintain the beams, used by appliances, and provide particle field protection to prevent the leakage of radioactivity. The neutrons are absorbed by the moderating target. Water or gas is injected through the fuel tubes too to cool them and to create steam that runs the regular electrical generators. This type of reactor will be light, powerful, and safer since it relies on automatic safety systems to control it. If such a reactor is used in a car, it will be no larger than the standard engine but able to generate about as much energy as a fighter plane can generate, if needed. If there is an accident,

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