As of today there are 102 light water reactors working with the United States, of these there are two different types. There are boiling water reactors (BWR) and pressurized water reactors (PWR), an example of each may be found right here in south Louisiana. River Bend generating station located outside of Baton Rouge in St. Francisville is a BWR, and Waterford 3 generating station is a PWR located outside of New Orleans in Killona. As an interesting side note, due to the changes in homeland security following the terrorist attacks of 9/11 it is now illegal for these power stations to feature nuclear within their names. So why should the mass populist care about nuclear power generation and why do we even need it? Well, to start with it must be understood that the only other way the United States produces large scale power for the country is buy burning coal or natural gas both of which are fossil fuels. The heat from burning these fuel is then used to boil water to generate steam. The steam is then used to drive turbines which in turn drive generators that produce electricity. We as a country must understand that it will only become vastly expensive to continue to burn massive amounts of fossil fuels for power generation due to not only EPA regulations but to the rising costs of recovering fossils fuels. So how does nuclear power help? To start with a nuclear reaction contains a million times more energy than a rapid oxidation chemical reaction for example it takes a little less than a pound of coal to power a 100 watt light bulb for 24 hours. On the other hand it would only take one millionth of the same amount of Uranium to be fission to power the same 100 watt light bulb for 24 hours with no green house or NOx gases released into are atmosphere as a byproduct of the reaction. Now that we can see a little of the benefits of nuclear power generation let's explore what actually happens inside of the reactor itself.