Welcome to brain Stuff from house stuffworks dot com where smart happens him Marshall Brain. Every time there's a military crisis overseas, we hear about nuclear powered aircraft carriers heading over to investigate what does the nuclear powered part mean. Let's say that you were to power an aircraft carrier with gasoline. An aircraft carrier weighs about a hund thousand tons and has engines that can generate two hundred and
eighty thousand horsepower. The ship would have to carry millions of gallons of gas to stay at sea for any length of time. Instead, the ship has a small nuclear reactor on board. The reactor is like the reactor at a nuclear power plant, but it's extremely compact. The heat from the nuclear fuel generates steam, and the steam powers the turbines that turn the propellers. The fuel for the
reactor is highly enriched urine um. A pound of this material is about the size of a baseball, but it contains the energy equivalent of about a million gallons of gas. For more on this and thousands of other topics, does that how stuff works dot Com, And don't forget to check out the brain stuff blog on the how Stuff Works dot com home page. You can also follow brain Stuff on Facebook or Twitter at brain stuff hs W. The How Stuff Works iphe app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes.