McGuire generates electricity much like Marshall Steam Station, but it uses special uranium pellets instead of coal as fuel. Loaded into fuel assemblies inside McGuire’s two reactor vessels, uranium atoms split, or undergo fission, when struck by neutron particles, producing heat. That heat is transferred from the fuel to a water system called the primary coolant, and this hot water passes through thousands of tubes in a steam generator. Water outside these tubes, called the secondary coolant, turns into steam. The steam is piped into the turbine building, where it forces giant turbine blades to spin, producing electricity in the same way as in a coal-burning plant. The turbine is connected by a rotating shaft to an electric generator, where a spinning magnet also produces electricity. McGuire, like Marshall, uses Lake Norman as a source of condenser water to cool its steam for reuse, and this condenser water is returned to Lake Norman slightly warmer but otherwise unchanged, without mixing with any other water used in the plant.