Learn About Nuclear Energy

Learn about radiation.

When you want a longer description of the course that goes on and on and on, use this description field. Be sure to bored everyone to death before they manage to squeeze out a click.

Nuclear energy is the energy of atoms. Learning about atoms—what they are, what they are made of, and how they behave—is a great way to start understanding nuclear energy.

You may have heard about atoms before. What you heard was probably a simplified explanation that doesn't quite match reality. In this course, we will review what you may already know. And then we will go further and explore some of the interesting things that atoms can do.

We are going to explore lots of ways to think about atoms. We are going to look at atoms from different perspectives so that you walk away with a solid grasp of how they work and what they can do. That will help later when we dig into other concepts, such as how atoms split or combine in nuclear reactions.

The pressurized water reactor has generated more megawatts of power for the public than any other class of reactor. Its design has stood the test of time. You have a chance to learn all about it, without having to get too technical.

Any power plant that uses heat as a source of energy is called a thermal power plant. Nuclear power plants are all thermal. Take this course to understand this general type of power plant.

Today's nuclear power comes from so-called generation III power plants, which have operated safely for decades. Although major accidents have been minimal (any from Gen III?), the prospect of a disaster casts a shadow on the future nuclear. Gen IV nuclear is an attempt to bring nuclear power to more of the world safely and effectively.

Learn about the goals of gen IV nuclear. Get a review of the reactor types, fuel, and other materials used to raise the bar on nuclear power. Learn about reprocessing fuel to extract more value and reduce it to cooler, shorter-lived byproducts.

Gain confidence in nuclear power as a sustainable energy source for the future.

Making sure everything still works^TM. That's what I like.

Learn about the second and third generation of nuclear power plant. This course covers the 4 most popular designs that have generated terawatts of power for decades.

Humanity has been tinkering with the steam engine for hundreds of years. In 1698, Thomas Savery, an English engineer, patented the first commercial steam-powered device for removing water from flooded mines.

Since then, through experimentation, pain-staking trial and error, and a bit of deep thinking, we have figured out the physics of heat energy, along with many effective ways of turning heat energy into useful work.

This introductory course explains the laws of thermodynamics, describes how water turns heat into work, and dives into the properties of water under pressure. These topics are directly related to using nuclear energy for power generation.