Video Transcript
Which of the following statements
correctly describes how the emission of nuclear radiation by decaying atomic nuclei
can be used in electricity generation? (A) The energy of the particles and
waves emitted as nuclear radiation can be transferred to thermal energy. Or (B) batteries that transfer the
chemical energy of the emitted nuclear radiation to electrical energy can be
made.
Let’s start by recalling that
unstable atomic nuclei can sometimes undergo spontaneous changes known as nuclear
decay. And when atomic nuclei decay, they
emit particles and waves known as nuclear radiation. Materials which contain unstable
nuclei are known as radioactive. And electricity generation is one
of the main applications of radioactive materials. This question gives us two
statements about how radioactive materials are used to generate electricity.
Now there are two main ways in
which we can produce electricity using radioactive materials. The first is in nuclear power
plants. In nuclear power plants, the energy
of the nuclear radiation given off by radioactive materials is used to boil
water. This process transfers energy from
nuclear energy in the nuclei of atoms to thermal energy in the water. This causes the water to boil,
turning it into steam, and the steam can then be used to turn turbines, which
generate electricity.
The other method of using
radioactivity to produce electricity is in nuclear batteries. Nuclear batteries contain small
amounts of radioactive material. And the radiation given off by this
material converts nuclear energy into thermal energy, which is then used to generate
electricity. Nuclear batteries are different to
nuclear power stations in that they don’t use water and they don’t have any moving
parts. However, both nuclear batteries and
nuclear power plants involve the transfer of nuclear energy to thermal energy via
nuclear radiation. This means that statement (A) is
correct. In both nuclear power plants and
nuclear batteries, the energy of the particles and waves emitted as nuclear
radiation is transferred to thermal energy which is then used to generate
electricity.
But what about statement (B)? After all, we know that nuclear
batteries use radiation to produce electricity. There’s actually just one word in
this statement that makes it incorrect: chemical. Statement (B) says that we can make
batteries which transfer the chemical energy of nuclear radiation to electrical
energy, but this is incorrect since nuclear radiation does not have chemical
energy. So we know that statement (B) is
incorrect. And the correct answer is statement
(A).
