Nuclear Power, Pollution and Politics

---

The amount of time it takes for the radioactivity of radioactive material to decrease to half its original level is called the radioactive half-life. Radioactive waste with a short half-life is often stored temporarily before disposal to reduce potential radiation doses to workers who handle and transport the waste. This storage system also reduces the radiation levels at disposal sites. By volume, most of the waste related to the nuclear power industry has a relatively low level of radioactivity. Uranium mill tailings contain the radioactive element radium, which decays to produce radon, a radioactive gas.

Most uranium mill tailings are placed near the processing facility or mill where they come from. Uranium mill tailings are covered with a sealing barrier of material like clay to prevent radon from escaping into the atmosphere, and then the barrier is covered by a layer of soil, rocks, or other materials to prevent erosion of the sealing barrier.

The other types of low-level radioactive waste are the tools, protective clothing, wiping cloths, and other disposable items that become contaminated with small amounts of radioactive dust or particles at nuclear fuel processing facilities and nuclear power plants. These materials are subject to special regulations that govern their handling, storage, and disposal so they will not come in contact with the outside environment. High-level radioactive waste consists of irradiated or spent nuclear reactor fuel i. The spent reactor fuel is in a solid form, consisting of small fuel pellets in long metal tubes called rods.

Spent reactor fuel assemblies are highly radioactive, and initially, must be stored in specially designed pools of water. The water cools the fuel and acts as a radiation shield. Spent reactor fuel assemblies can also be stored in specially designed dry storage containers. An increasing number of reactor operators now store their older spent fuel in dry storage facilities using special outdoor concrete or steel containers with air cooling.

The United States does not currently have a permanent disposal facility for high-level nuclear waste. When a nuclear reactor stops operating, it must be decommissioned. Decommissioning involves safely removing from service the reactor and all equipment that has become radioactive and reducing radioactivity to a level that permits other uses of the property. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has strict rules governing nuclear power plant decommissioning that involve cleanup of radioactively contaminated power plant systems and structures and removal of the radioactive fuel.

Energy Facts State and U. Nuclear Power and the Environment. Nuclear reactors in the United States may have large concrete domes covering the reactor. A containment structure is required to contain accidental releases of radiation. Not all nuclear power plants have cooling towers. Moderate amounts of low-level waste are through chemical and volume control system CVCS.

This includes gas, liquid, and solid waste produced through the process of purifying the water through evaporation. Liquid waste is reprocessed continuously, and gas waste is filtered, compressed, stored to allow decay, diluted, and then discharged. The rate at which this is allowed is regulated and studies must prove that such discharge does not violate dose limits to a member of the public see radioactive effluent emissions. Solid waste can be disposed of simply by placing it where it will not be disturbed for a few years.

In the United States environmental groups have said that uranium mining companies are attempting to avoid cleanup costs at disused uranium mine sites. Environmental remediation is required by many states after a mine becomes inactive. Environmental groups have filed legal objections to prevent mining companies from avoiding compulsory cleanups. Uranium mining companies have skirted the cleanup laws by reactivating their mine sites briefly from time-to-time. Letting the mines sites stay contaminated over decades increases the potential risk of radioactive contamination leeching into the ground according to one environmental group, the Information Network for Responsible Mining, which started legal proceedings about March Among the corporations holding mining companies with such rarely used mines is General Atomics.

All reactors in the United States are required by law to have a containment building. The walls of containment buildings are several feet thick and made of concrete and therefore can stop the release of any radiation emitted by the reactor into the environment. If a person is to worry about an energy source that releases large amounts of radiation into the environment, they should worry about coal-fired plants. In fact, the fly ash emitted by a [coal] power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.

At one extreme, the scientists estimated fly ash radiation in individuals' bones at around 18 millirems thousandths of a rem, a unit for measuring doses of ionizing radiation a year. Doses for the two nuclear plants, by contrast, ranged from between three and six millirems for the same period. And when all food was grown in the area, radiation doses were 50 to percent higher around the coal plants. The total amount of radioactivity released through this method depends on the power plant, the regulatory requirements, and the plant's performance. Atmospheric dispersion models combined with pathway models are employed to accurately approximate the dose to a member of the public from the effluents emitted.

Effluent monitoring is conducted continuously at the plant. A leak of radioactive water at Vermont Yankee in , along with similar incidents at more than 20 other US nuclear plants in recent years, has kindled doubts about the reliability, durability, and maintenance of aging nuclear installations in the United States. Tritium is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that emits a low-energy beta particle and is usually measured in becquerels i. Tritium can be contained in water released from a nuclear plant.

The primary concern for tritium release is the presence in drinking water, in addition to biological magnification leading to tritium in crops and animals consumed for food. Tritium, [25] the mass 3 isotope of hydrogen is deliberately created for thermonuclear weapons use, at government-owned reactors like Watts Bar, by irradiating lithium 6 with neutrons to fission i1.

Light water reactors, the standard kind in the USA, generate small quantities of deuterium by neutron capture in the water. This consumes enough neutrons that the natural uranium needs enrichment to raise its fissile U content from 0. Canada's CANDU design uses "heavy water", deuterium oxide, and can use un-enriched uranium because deuterium captures so very few of the neutrons.

Environmental impact of nuclear power

So the rate of production of tritium from the small amount of deuterium in US reactors must be quite low. That gives some idea of how small a unit the Becquerel is.

A Litre, of course, is a thousand ml. Legal concentration limits have differed greatly from place to place see table right. Uranium mining is the process of extraction of uranium ore from the ground. The worldwide production of uranium in amounted to 50, tonnes. The mining and milling of uranium present significant dangers to the environment. It follows that, for the same amount of energy, much less uranium needs to be mined than coal, cutting the environmental impacts of uranium mining on nuclear energy generation.

The product is a powder of unenriched uranium, " yellowcake ," which is sold on the uranium market as U 3 O 8. Despite efforts made in cleaning up cold war nuclear arms race uranium sites, significant problems stemming from the legacy of uranium development still exist today on the Navajo Nation and in the states of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona.

Hundreds of abandoned mines, primarily used for the US arms race and not nuclear energy production, have not been cleaned up and present environmental and health risks in many communities. Numerous studies have been done on possible effect of nuclear power in causing cancer. Such studies have looked for excess cancers in both plant workers and surrounding populations due to releases during normal operations of nuclear plants and other parts of the nuclear power industry, as well as excess cancers in workers and the public due to accidental releases.

There is agreement that excess cancers in both plant workers and the surrounding public have been caused by accidental releases such as the Chernobyl accident.

There have been several epidemiological studies that say there is an increased risk of various diseases, especially cancers, among people who live near nuclear facilities. A widely cited meta-analysis by Baker et al. However this study has been criticized on several grounds — such as combining heterogeneous data different age groups, sites that were not nuclear power plants, different zone definitions , arbitrary selection of 17 out of 37 individual studies, exclusion of sites with zero observed cases or deaths, etc. The committee found that children living near power plants in Britain are no more likely to develop leukemia than those living elsewhere [49] Similarly, a study for the National Cancer Institute found no excess cancer mortalities in US counties close to nuclear power plants.

A subculture of frequently undocumented nuclear workers do the dirty, difficult, and potentially dangerous work shunned by regular employees. The World Nuclear Association states that the transient workforce of "nuclear gypsies" — casual workers employed by subcontractors has been "part of the nuclear scene for at least four decades.

The study evaluated 31 types of cancers, primary and secondary. Nuclear power reactor accidents can result in a variety of radioisotopes being released into the environment.

The health impact of each radioisotope depends on a variety of factors. Iodine is potentially an important source of morbidity in accidental discharges because of its prevalence and because it settles on the ground. When iodine is released, it can be inhaled or consumed after it enters the food chain, primarily through contaminated fruits, vegetables, milk, and groundwater. Iodine in the body rapidly accumulates in the thyroid gland, becoming a source of beta radiation.

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, the world's worst nuclear accident since , displaced 50, households after radiation leaked into the air, soil and sea. Production of nuclear power relies on the nuclear fuel cycle, which includes uranium mining and milling.

Uranium workers are routinely exposed to low levels of radon decay products and gamma radiation. Risks of leukemia from acute and high doses of gamma radiation are well-known, but there is a debate about risks from lower doses.

Nuclear power reactors do not produce direct carbon dioxide emissions

The risks of other hematological cancers in uranium workers have been examined in very few studies. With coal plants in the United States, this amounts to emissions of 0. In terms of dose to a human living nearby, it is sometimes cited that coal plants release times the radioactivity of nuclear plants. Unlike coal-fired or oil-fired generation, nuclear power generation does not directly produce any sulfur dioxide , nitrogen oxides , or mercury pollution from fossil fuels is blamed for 24, early deaths each year in the U.

However, as with all energy sources, there is some pollution associated with support activities such as mining, manufacturing and transportation. Proponents argue that the problems of nuclear waste "do not come anywhere close" to approaching the problems of fossil fuel waste.

In their life-cycle comparison, deaths per TW-yr of electricity produced from to are quoted as for hydropower, for coal, 85 for natural gas, and 8 for nuclear. As with all thermoelectric plants, nuclear power plants need cooling systems.

Nuclear Power, Pollution and Politics

The most common systems for thermal power plants, including nuclear, are:. Once-through cooling systems use more water, but less water is lost to evaporation. This thermal efficiency is somewhat lower than that of coal-fired power plants, [80] thus creating more waste heat. It is possible to use waste heat in cogeneration applications such as district heating.

The principles of cogeneration and district heating with nuclear power are the same as any other form of thermal power production. Waste heat is more commonly used in industrial applications. During Europe's and heat waves , French, Spanish and German utilities had to secure exemptions from regulations in order to discharge overheated water into the environment. Some nuclear reactors shut down. During the process of nuclear power generation, large volumes of water are used.

The uranium fuel inside reactors undergoes induced nuclear fission which releases great amounts of energy that is used to heat water. The water turns into steam and rotates a turbine, creating electricity.

When intaking water for cooling, nuclear plants, like all thermal power plants including coal, geothermal and biomass power plants , use special structures. Water is often drawn through screens to minimise to entry of debris. The problem is that many aquatic organisms are trapped and killed against the screens, through a process known as impingement. Aquatic organisms small enough to pass through the screens are subject to toxic stress in a process known as entrainment.

Billions of marine organisms, such as fish, seals, shellfish, and turtles, essential to the food chain, are sucked into the cooling systems and destroyed. Many stages of the nuclear fuel chain — mining, milling, transport, fuel fabrication, enrichment, reactor construction, decommissioning and waste management — use fossil fuels, or involve changes to land use, and hence emit carbon dioxide and conventional pollutants. Uranium is not burned in a nuclear power plant as coal is so there are no emissions from it. All of the waste that comes from the fission of uranium stays in the plant and is therefore able to be disposed of in a safe way in which the uranium is kept out of the environment.

Also, nuclear energy produces the same amount if not less greenhouse gasses than renewable resources. Like all energy sources, various life cycle analysis LCA studies have led to a range of estimates on the median value for nuclear power, with most comparisons of carbon dioxide emissions show nuclear power as comparable to renewable energy sources.

To better quantify and compare greenhouse gas emissions reported by researchers using many different assumptions and techniques, the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory is sponsoring meta-analysis studies using harmonization, in which reported life-cycle emissions are adjusted to consistent assumptions.

The results commonly narrow the range of carbon emissions for a given energy source. Many commentators have argued that an expansion of nuclear power would help combat climate change. Others have argued that it is one way to reduce emissions, but it comes with its own problems, such as risks related to severe nuclear accidents , war attacks on nuclear sites, nuclear terrorism and currently no generally accepted solution for the disposal of radioactive waste which needs to be heavily guarded for hundreds of thousands of years.

There is also some uncertainty surrounding the future GHG emissions of nuclear power, which has to do with the potential for a declining uranium ore grade without a corresponding increase in the efficiency of enrichment methods. The worst accidents at nuclear power plants have resulted in severe environmental contamination. However, the extent of the actual damage is still being debated. In March an earthquake and tsunami caused damage that led to explosions and partial meltdowns at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant in Japan.

Later, the UK, France and some other countries told their nationals to consider leaving Tokyo, in response to fears of spreading nuclear contamination. Officials said also that the fallout from the Dai-ichi plant is "hindering search efforts for victims from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami". According to the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan, "by April 27 approximately 55 percent of the fuel in reactor unit 1 had melted, along with 35 percent of the fuel in unit 2, and 30 percent of the fuel in unit 3; and overheated spent fuels in the storage pools of units 3 and 4 probably were also damaged".

Years of clean-up will drag into decades. Seriously exposed workers may be at increased risk of cancers for the rest of their lives John Price, a former member of the Safety Policy Unit at the UK's National Nuclear Corporation, has said that it "might be years before melting fuel rods can be safely removed from Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant". In the second half of August , Japanese lawmakers announced that Prime Minister Naoto Kan would likely visit the Fukushima Prefecture to announce that the large contaminated area around the destroyed reactors would be declared uninhabitable, perhaps for decades.

The town of Okuma was reported as being over 25 times above the safe limit of 20 millisieverts per year.

Nuclear power, pollution and politics|INIS

As of the Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine was and remains the world's worst nuclear power plant disaster. Estimates of its death toll are controversial and range from 62 to 25,, with the high projections including deaths that have yet to happen. Peer reviewed publications have generally supported a projected total figure in the low tens of thousands; for example an estimate of 16, excess cancer deaths are predicted to occur due to the Chernobyl accident out to the year , whereas, in the same period, several hundred million cancer cases are expected from other causes from International Agency for Research on Cancer published in the International Journal of Cancer in Large amounts of radioactive contamination were spread across Europe due to the Chernobyl disaster, and cesium and strontium contaminated many agricultural products, livestock and soil.

The accident necessitated the evacuation of the entire city of Pripyat and of , people from Kiev , rendering an area of land unusable to humans for an indeterminate period. As radioactive materials decay, they release particles that can damage the body and lead to cancer, particularly cesium and iodine In the Chernobyl disaster, releases of cesium contaminated land. Some communities, including the entire city of Pripyat, were abandoned permanently. One news source reported that thousands of people who drank milk contaminated with radioactive iodine developed thyroid cancer.

Due to the bioaccumulation of cesium, some mushrooms as well as wild animals which eat them, e. This caused the reactor power to surge to about 20,MW and in turn, an explosion occurred. The event is the only known fatal reactor accident in the United States and the first to occur in the world. Nuclear power plants , uranium enrichment plants, fuel fabrication plants, and even potentially uranium mines are vulnerable to attacks which could lead to widespread radioactive contamination.

The attack threat is of several general types: Nuclear reactors become preferred targets during military conflict and have been repeatedly attacked by military air strikes: According to a report by the U. Congressional Budget Office , "The human, environmental, and economic costs from a successful attack on a nuclear power plant that results in the release of substantial quantities of radioactive material to the environment could be great. The release of radioactivity could lead to thousands of near-term deaths and greater numbers of long-term fatalities.

Insider sabotage occurs because insiders can observe and work around security measures.

What is Kobo Super Points?

Since the atomic age began, the U. A better understanding of the reality of the insider threat will help to overcome complacency and is critical to getting countries to take stronger preventative measures. Researchers have emphasized the need to make nuclear facilities extremely safe from sabotage and attacks that could release massive quantities of radioactivity into the environment and community. New reactor designs have features of passive safety , such as the flooding of the reactor core without active intervention by reactor operators.

But these safety measures have generally been developed and studied with respect to accidents, not to the deliberate reactor attack by a terrorist group. However, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission does now requires new reactor license applications to consider security during the design stage. Following the Fukushima I nuclear accidents there has been an increased focus on the risks associated with seismic activity and the potential for environmental radioactive release.

Genpatsu-shinsai , meaning nuclear power plant earthquake disaster is a term which was coined by Japanese seismologist Professor Katsuhiko Ishibashi in Ishibashi envisages that such an event would have a global impact seriously affecting future generations. The Blayais Nuclear Power Plant flood was a flood that took place on the evening of December 27, It was caused when a combination of the tide and high winds from the extratropical storm Martin led to the sea walls of the Blayais Nuclear Power Plant in France being overwhelmed.

• Protecting Your Child in Prayer
• Deadly Betrayals
• Ideas of Quantum Chemistry
• Deathstruck
• Annuities For Dummies®