Nuclear power
In a nutshell, it's about our fuel and what happens in the reactor vessel. And about how OKG creates stability.
In a nuclear power plant, enriched uranium is used as fuel. The uranium is placed in four-meter-long fuel elements surrounded by water inside the reactor vessel. When uranium atoms split, heat is generated and this causes the water in the reactor vessel to boil. The steam from the water then drives large turbines that produce electricity. It is the turbines that stabilize the Swedish electricity system, through so-called inertia.
The text above is a summary. Nuclear power is a complex process, but if you want to learn more about the engineering behind a nuclear power plant, we recommend you take a look at our knowledge bank. Here you'll find sketches of what makes our turbines spin and our water boil steadily. Here you will also find our history, the story of how nuclear power on the Simpevarp peninsula a few miles outside Oskarshamn took off on July 14, 1965. And how Oskarshamn 1, called O1, was then officially inaugurated in 1972 and then got friends named O2 and O3.
Today, only the latter is in operation. It is an impressive construction: O3 is one of the world's largest boiling water reactors and annually produces an amount of energy equivalent to the annual consumption of half a million homes.