SoFiA5454555

09.04.2022 23:17 •  Английский язык

Задайте все типы вопросов к тексту ATOMIC ENERGY. A man trying to see a single atom is like a man trying to see a single drop of water in the sea while he is flying high above it. He will see the sea made up of a great many drops of water but he certainly will not be able to see a single drop. By the way, there are so many atoms in the drop of water that if one could count one atom a second, day and night, it would take one hundred milliard years. But that is certainly impossible.

Man has, however, learned the secret of the atom. He has learned to split atoms in order to get great quantities of energy. At present, coal is one of the most important fuel and our basic source of energy. It is quite possible that some day coal and other fuel may be replaced by atomic energy. Atomic energy replacing the present sources of energy, the latter will find various new applications.

The nuclear reactor is one of the most reliable "furnaces" producing atomic energy. Being used to produce energy, the reactor produces it in the form of heat. In other words, atoms splitting in the reactor, heat is developed. Gas, water, melted metals, and some other liquids circulating through the reactor carry that heat away. The heat may be carried to pipes of the steam generator containing water. The resulting steam drives a turbine, the turbine in its turn driving an electric generator. So we see that a nuclear power-station is like any other power-station but the familiar coal-burning furnace is replaced by a nuclear one, that is the reactor supplies energy to the turbines. By the way, a ton of uranium (nuclear fuel) can give us as much energy as 2.5 to 3 million tons of coal.

The first industrial nuclear power-station in the world was constructed in Obninsk not far from Moscow in 1954. It is of high capacity and has already been working for many years. One may mention here that the station in question was put into operation two years earlier than the British one and three and a half years earlier than the American nuclear power-stations.