Even though the plant shut down the production of electricity, the nuclear reaction keeps generating heat.

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Instead, it proposed to develop alternative, non-nuclear, sources of heat and power to replace them.

ECONOMIST: The time-bombs of Tomsk

The vehicle is powered by what is essentially a nuclear battery that converts heat into electricity providing power to Curiosity's instruments as well as generating warmth during the frigid Martian nights.

WSJ: Curiosity, the New Mars Rover | Visualizer

This is the current of water that takes enormous amounts of heat about as much as would be generated by a million nuclear power plants from the tropics and carries it to eastern North America and western Europe.

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Modular nuclear reactors take uranium, or in some cases thorium, and produce steam for turbines via heat generated in fission reactions.

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Thermoelectric coupling uses heat from the decay of a radioactive fuel (as opposed to the full-scale nuclear fission which powers a reactor on Earth) as its energy source.

ECONOMIST: A more efficient way to make electricity in spacecraft