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I know this is over-simplified, but often that's what we need to get 
a point across.  To get electric power, you have to turn a generator 
(wires and a magnet).  To turn the generator, it is connected to a 
turbine (fins on an axle).  To turn the turbine, blow a fluid at the 
fins (water wheel, wind generator, or steam).  To get steam, you have 
to boil water (burn coal or oil or gas or diesel fuel OR use the heat 
from radioactive decay).  The heat from radioactive decay is the big 
deal to power generators.  The radioactive waste is another big deal.

Every "Geiger ping" represents an atom disintegrating (or is 
proportional to many disintegrations).  I used a surplus clicking 
Geiger counter in a chemistry exhibit with a alpha sources such as 
orange-glazed (uranium-containing) pottery, potassium chloride "light 
salt," a smoke detector (Americium), a radium dial clock, and an old 
Coleman lantern mantle (thorium source).  The exhibit had shielding 
materials such as plastic, aluminum, wood, and lead sheets.

Marie and Pierre Curie used radiometers (electroscopes) to detect 
radioactivity until Hans Geiger invented the counter in 1928.  They 
might have been able to monitor their own exposure to radioisotopes 
if they had had a quantitative meter sooner.

Hope that is not more than you wanted to know!  Jane

>I am not afraid of radioactivity as it is a radioactive world, i.e. the
>world around us is radioactive naturally. This is why I think we can include
>a little radioactive material to use with a Geiger sensor.
>
>The thing is I have a difficulty deductively to connect in idea the "Geiger
>pings" to nuclear reactors, radioactive decay to energy power.
>
>Best, Tal

-- 
Jane Snell Copes
Science Outside the Box
651-451-3720

"Nothing is too wonderful to be true."   Michael Faraday

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