Nuclear energy is a technology for the large-scale generation of secondary energy by means of nuclear fission of uranium or plutonium. It has been used on a large scale for electricity production since the 1950s.

Based on the first experiments on radioactivity at the beginning of the last century by Antoine H. Becquerel, the Curie couple, Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner, among others, it was proven that a chain reaction is possible when uranium undergoes nuclear fission by releasing further neutrons. The Italian physicist Enrico Fermi and his team then carried out the first controlled nuclear fission in 1942 and have since been regarded as the inventor of the first nuclear reactor.

The world's first civilian nuclear power plant (NPP) with an electrical output of 5 MW was commissioned in 1954 in Obninsk, Russia. A year later, another plant with ten times the output was connected to the network in Calder Hall, England, which is known as the world's first commercial nuclear power plant.

Steam from nuclear reactors for low-emission power generation

Nuclear power plants are thermal power plants. They use the primary energy of the atomic nucleus and convert it into secondary energy in the form of electricity. However, they do not obtain the heat required to vaporize the water from the combustion of fossil energy sources such as oil, natural gas or coal, but by nuclear fission, i.e. by splitting a heavy atomic nucleus (usually uranium or plutonium) into two or more lighter atomic nuclei, which results in the release of energy.

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