Condenser

Steam

Cold Water

1) The cold water is pump into the nuclear reactor which is a place where the nuclear fission process occurred.
2) What happened in the nuclear reactor?
Firstly, you have to understand what nuclear fission is.
Basically, nuclear fission is a splitting process of the big mass nucleus into two or more nuclides which release some energy.
In the above case, the uranium rod containing solid ceramics pellet of uranium-235 which functioned as a fuel.
The uranium is very unstable so that the fission can happened either spontaneously or when it captures (bombard) with a neutron.
The equation below represents the fission of a uranium-235 nucleus when bombarded by a neutron
+

+3

+ Energy

Heat

These 3 neutron release will bombard another

three uranium atoms and will cause a chain
reaction to occur.
As the fission process keep continues, the amount of energy (heat) release also increases.
3) The energy (heat) released is used to boil the water and turns it into high temperature and high pressure steam.
4) The steam then drives the turbin which spin the generator to create the electricity.
5) After drives the turbin, the steam goes to the condenser and undergoes condensation process to produce water so that in can be reused again.