Georgetown Law
Technology Review

American nuclear power is experiencing a renaissance, supported by an ideologically diverse set of parties. This shift in public attitudes, which have generally been inimical to nuclear energy, belies a cold economic reality: electricity demand is growing, and more generation capacity is needed to meet it. Nuclear power proponents insist that nuclear is the only practical solution to meet this demand in an environmentally responsible way. Opponents counter that the risks are too great, and the costs are too large.

Too often, however, the debate involves strident assertions of fact that are unmoored from the technical details of nuclear energy itself. For example, advocates sometimes point to the nuclear industry’s impeccable safety record to argue for looser regulation to enable innovation, even though that record was compiled in a highly-regulated environment with older, tried-and-true technology. Opponents similarly insist that nuclear power is prohibitively expensive and produces too much radioactive waste, despite new reactor designs that limit costs and reduce waste. Parsing this noise requires understanding how nuclear power actually works.

To that end, this Technology Explainer explains the basics of nuclear power so that stakeholders can accurately assess nuclear policy, regulations, and technology. In Part II, I start by reviewing the basics of atomic physics. Part III builds on this foundation to explain how nuclear reactions generate energy. Then, in Part IV, I describe how nuclear power plants harness this energy to produce electricity using current technology as a guide. Part V concludes by briefly discussing the design considerations behind emerging reactor technologies.