Hazards of Nuclear Fission Power and the Choice of Alternatives

1974 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
John T. Edsall
Keyword(s):  
Energy Production ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Biological Effects ◽  
Nuclear Fission ◽  
The United States ◽  
Radioactive Wastes ◽  
National Academy Of Sciences ◽  
The Future ◽  
Fission Power

Nuclear fission reactors are widely regarded as the chief energy source of the future. This article holds that the hazards of such reactors, in comparison with other prospective energy sources, are unacceptably high. The biological effects of ionizing radiations, as analyzed in the recent BEIR Report (1972) of a committee of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, are briefly reviewed; the effects include genetic mutations, induction of cancer, and developmental abnormalities. Hazards are encountered at many stages in the process of nuclear power production: in the mining and processing of uranium, in the design and operation of the reactors, and in the handling, shipping, and storage, of the huge quantities of radioactive wastes produced by the reactors. Grave questions have been raised concerning the safety of the emergency core-cooling systems of present reactors; and the planned breeder reactors, which will contain great quantities of plutonium-239, are likely to be even more hazardous. Storage of radioactive wastes, away from all risks of environmental contamination, in order to be acceptable must be secure for about half-a-million years. No place on Earth has yet been found for which such safety can be guaranteed. Hazards of theft, sabotage, and war, are formidable threats to the future of nuclear fission power.Use of fission power is not compulsory; present supplies of coal are adequate for two or three centuries, though its mining and use will require drastic steps to protect the environment, thereby raising costs. Alternative, and far less dangerously polluting, sources of large-scale energy production exist or can be developed: notably solar energy and probably nuclear fusion, where intensive research gives high promise of adequate systems for large-scale energy production within 20–30 years. Geothermal energy, though more limited in amount, is also promising. Great savings can also be made by reducing the extravagant use of energy, especially in such countries as the United States; and various conservation measures are indicated.

Nuclear fission

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sue Ion
Keyword(s):  
Energy Supply ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Nuclear Reactor ◽  
Nuclear Fission ◽  
Fuel Rods ◽  
Power Stations ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Burning Coal ◽  
Hollow Metal

This chapter will cover the nuclear fission option as a future energy supply, and will essentially address the question: can nuclear fission plug the gap until the potential of nuclear fusion is actually realized? (The potential for fusion is considered in detail chapter 7.) To put this question into context, let us first look at some of the key issues associated with nuclear fission, which currently supplies around one fifth of the UK’s electricity. Most large scale power stations produce electricity by generating steam, which is used to power a turbine. In a nuclear power station, the principle is the same, but instead of burning coal, oil, or gas to turn water into steam, the heat energy comes from a nuclear reactor. A reactor contains nuclear fuel, which remains in place for several months at a time, but over that time it generates a huge amount of energy. The fuel is usually made of uranium, often in the form of small pellets of uranium dioxide, a ceramic, stacked inside hollow metal tubes or fuel rods, which can be anything from a metre to four metres in length, depending on the reactor design. Each rod is about the diameter of a pencil, and the rods are assembled into carefully designed bundles, which in turn are fixed in place securely within the reactor. There are two isotopes (or different types) of uranium, and only one of these is a material which is ‘fissionable’—that is to say, if an atom of this uranium isotope is hit by a neutron, then it can split into two smaller atoms, giving off energy in the process and also emitting more neutrons. This, and other pathways, are illustrated in Fig. 6.1 (Source: CEA). Controlling the reaction, so that the energy from the fission of uranium atoms is given out slowly over a period of years, requires two aspects of the process to be carefully balanced. 1. First, there must be enough fissile atoms in the fuel so that—on average— each fission leads to exactly one other. Any fewer, and the reaction will die away.

scholarly journals LNTgate

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 239784731769499 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward J Calabrese
Keyword(s):  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Biological Effects ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cancer Risk Assessment ◽  
Response Model ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
National Academy Of Sciences ◽  
Linear Dose ◽  
The Us ◽  
Academy Of Sciences

This commentary summarizes a spate of recent papers that provide historical evidence that the 1956 recommendation of the US National Academy of Sciences Biological Effects of Atomic Radiation I Genetics Panel to switch from a threshold to a linear dose–response model for risk assessment was an ideologically motivated decision based on deliberate falsification and fabrication of the research record. The recommendation by the Genetics Panel had far-reaching influence, affecting cancer risk assessment, risk communication strategies, community public health, and numerous medical practices in the United States and worldwide. This commentary argues that the toxicology, risk assessment, and regulatory communities examine this issue, addressing how these new historical evaluations affect the history and educational practices of these fields as well as carcinogen regulation.

scholarly journals Potencial de producción de energía eléctrica en México empleando la circulación del parque vehicular

2019 ◽  
pp. 25-30
Author(s):  
Felipe Castañeda-Olivares ◽  
Claudia Aguirre-Rodríguez
Keyword(s):  
Energy Production ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Electrical Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
Combined Cycle ◽  
Motor Vehicles ◽  
Interconnected System ◽  
Conventional Technology ◽  
World Economic ◽  
Power Clean

The production of electricity is a necessity of modern life and Mexico does not escape it. Mexico ranks 51st in the Global Electricity Competitiveness Index, according to World Economic Forum studies. Where the following sources of energy production are used. Conventional Technology: Combined Cycle, Conventional Thermoelectric, Carb, Turbo Gas, Internal Combustion, Nuclear Power. Clean and Renewable Energy: Hydroelectric, Wind, Geothermal, Solar Photovoltaic and Solar Thermal. Electrical power is also imported from the United States. The objective of this research is to make known other possibilities of generating electricity that have not been explored in Mexico or contemplated in the Program for the Development of the National Electrical System (PRODESEN, 2018-2032). The hypothesis put forward as a proposal is that the 38 million motor vehicles that exist and circulate on the country’s roads and highways can be used to generate electricity through piezoelectric generators and wind turbines. Based on the planning scenario estimates, the maximum integrated demand of the National Interconnected System (SIN) projects an average annual growth of 3.2% between 2018 and 2032. To achieve this growth, it is necessary to consider all the possibilities of energy production and its profitability.

scholarly journals Living with Fukushima

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Ruby Somerville
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Nuclear Industry ◽  
Nuclear Radiation ◽  
Exclusion Zone ◽  
Human Scale ◽  
The People ◽  
The Future ◽  
New Beginnings

<p>Nuclear power is a highly disputed and powerful industry that continues to grow worldwide alongside safer renewable resources. No country seemed to have as much unwavering faith in the nuclear industry as Japan, until the catastrophic events of Fukushima in 2011. Although large-scale disasters caused by nuclear power facilities are few and far between, the devastation to the environment is, in most cases, irreparable. Fukushima remains to this day a painful reminder of this fact.  In 2011 Japan suffered an unprecedented three-strike disaster. First a 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck the country. This was followed by a subsequent tsunami which tore apart Japan’s East Coast and resulted in the loss of more than 20,000 lives. However, it was the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant that was the final devastating blow. 160,000 people were forced to evacuate. These nuclear refugees, as they have come to be known, have paid the ultimate price. Their home lands have been permanently scarred by the radiation, with only small sections able to be decontaminated. Even in these areas, land that has been cultivated for centuries will likely never again be able to produce safe crops in the traditional way. In a region highly valued for its agriculture and fishing industries, they have lost everything that they spent generations working and caring for.  The Architecture and Dystopia Stream challenges architectural projects to call attention to the dystopian realities that our generation will face in the future. This is a project for a small broken town, Namie, and how we might propose a future where the people can live alongside the damage left by nuclear contamination. The project attempts to capture intimate day-to- day moments for the people within a much larger scheme that sheds light on the potentially damaging consequences of the nuclear industry. In this sense, the true challenge of the project is to simultaneously explore both the megascale and the human-scale.  Earlier this year Namie was one of the first towns in the Fukushima exclusion zone to be partially reopened. Since then thousands of residents have made the tough decision between the familiarity of and love for their home town and the invisible threat of radiation. It is heard continually in surveys, interviews, and political rallies that these evacuees simply want their old lives back, and those who are returning to Namie have seized this chance. It is clear, however, that the ‘cleanup’ of these towns that are reopening cannot repair the lasting damage of the nuclear radiation on the natural environment. Fishing in the river, picking mushrooms in the foothills, these sorts of activities were part of daily life in this rural town that can no longer be enjoyed without great risk. Not only have they lost many of the joys that come with living so closely amongst the environment, they also can no longer make a living off their land. It is feared that their lives here will be a shadow of what they were before. Although the reality sounds bleak and dystopian, the architectural intervention designed for Namie will be Utopian, focussing on the future that these returning residents are daring to hope for.  Lastly, it has been openly speculated that the heavy influence of the nuclear industry on Japanese government is responsible for Japan’s lack of exploration into safer, sustainable energy sources. Japan is usually on the forefront of new technologies. Following the Fukushima meltdown, for the first time since it was introduced to the country, Japanese are questioning and openly challenging the use of nuclear energy in their country. The uncertainty of the future has spurred opportunities for a change in direction, in what many consider is a pivotal moment in Japan’s history. This project aims to be bold and push past what might be an expected solution, capitalising on this rare openness towards new beginnings, to propose a highly unconventional project that optimistically envisions a better future for the people of Namie.</p>

Living with Fukushima

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Ruby Somerville
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Nuclear Industry ◽  
Nuclear Radiation ◽  
Exclusion Zone ◽  
Human Scale ◽  
The People ◽  
The Future ◽  
New Beginnings

<p>Nuclear power is a highly disputed and powerful industry that continues to grow worldwide alongside safer renewable resources. No country seemed to have as much unwavering faith in the nuclear industry as Japan, until the catastrophic events of Fukushima in 2011. Although large-scale disasters caused by nuclear power facilities are few and far between, the devastation to the environment is, in most cases, irreparable. Fukushima remains to this day a painful reminder of this fact.  In 2011 Japan suffered an unprecedented three-strike disaster. First a 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck the country. This was followed by a subsequent tsunami which tore apart Japan’s East Coast and resulted in the loss of more than 20,000 lives. However, it was the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant that was the final devastating blow. 160,000 people were forced to evacuate. These nuclear refugees, as they have come to be known, have paid the ultimate price. Their home lands have been permanently scarred by the radiation, with only small sections able to be decontaminated. Even in these areas, land that has been cultivated for centuries will likely never again be able to produce safe crops in the traditional way. In a region highly valued for its agriculture and fishing industries, they have lost everything that they spent generations working and caring for.  The Architecture and Dystopia Stream challenges architectural projects to call attention to the dystopian realities that our generation will face in the future. This is a project for a small broken town, Namie, and how we might propose a future where the people can live alongside the damage left by nuclear contamination. The project attempts to capture intimate day-to- day moments for the people within a much larger scheme that sheds light on the potentially damaging consequences of the nuclear industry. In this sense, the true challenge of the project is to simultaneously explore both the megascale and the human-scale.  Earlier this year Namie was one of the first towns in the Fukushima exclusion zone to be partially reopened. Since then thousands of residents have made the tough decision between the familiarity of and love for their home town and the invisible threat of radiation. It is heard continually in surveys, interviews, and political rallies that these evacuees simply want their old lives back, and those who are returning to Namie have seized this chance. It is clear, however, that the ‘cleanup’ of these towns that are reopening cannot repair the lasting damage of the nuclear radiation on the natural environment. Fishing in the river, picking mushrooms in the foothills, these sorts of activities were part of daily life in this rural town that can no longer be enjoyed without great risk. Not only have they lost many of the joys that come with living so closely amongst the environment, they also can no longer make a living off their land. It is feared that their lives here will be a shadow of what they were before. Although the reality sounds bleak and dystopian, the architectural intervention designed for Namie will be Utopian, focussing on the future that these returning residents are daring to hope for.  Lastly, it has been openly speculated that the heavy influence of the nuclear industry on Japanese government is responsible for Japan’s lack of exploration into safer, sustainable energy sources. Japan is usually on the forefront of new technologies. Following the Fukushima meltdown, for the first time since it was introduced to the country, Japanese are questioning and openly challenging the use of nuclear energy in their country. The uncertainty of the future has spurred opportunities for a change in direction, in what many consider is a pivotal moment in Japan’s history. This project aims to be bold and push past what might be an expected solution, capitalising on this rare openness towards new beginnings, to propose a highly unconventional project that optimistically envisions a better future for the people of Namie.</p>

Characterization of Point Defect Generation, Migration and Coalescence in Irradiated SiC by Atomistic Simulation

2007 ◽  
Vol 1043 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Farrell ◽  
Noam Bernstein ◽  
Wing Kam Liu
Keyword(s):  
Point Defect ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ceramic Composites ◽  
Atomic Scale ◽  
Empirical Potential ◽  
Defect Clusters ◽  
Point Defect Clusters

AbstractRenewed interest in nuclear power in the United States has prompted investigations into new reactor designs, resulting in a need to gain a greater understanding of the properties of the materials which are proposed for use in next generation nuclear reactors. This presentation will focus on preliminary results of large-scale empirical potential atomistic studies into the generation of point defect clusters in 3C SiC by particle irradiation and the evolution from point defect clusters to ‘voids’ on the atomic scale. Our working definition of ‘void’ will be explained in the context of small length-scale simulations. The determination of interstitial and vacancy diffusivities for the empirical potential employed and its impact on defect coalescence will be discussed. The characterization of initial damage states for given irradiation conditions will be presented and compared to previous work on ceramics and ceramic-composites.

scholarly journals No Hurry to Recycle

2006 ◽  
Vol 128 (05) ◽  
pp. 32-35
Author(s):  
Frank N. Von Hippel
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Waste ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Power Plants ◽  
The United States ◽  
Yucca Mountain ◽  
Department Of Energy ◽  
Spent Fuel ◽  
National Academy Of Sciences ◽  
Academy Of Sciences ◽  
Nuclear Waste Policy

This article discusses the promotion of Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) by US Department of Energy. GNEP is a strategy for dealing with the accumulation of radioactive waste from power plants by reprocessing some of the spent fuel. The primary domestic benefit of this initiative would be to reduce the quantity of plutonium and other transuranic waste that would have to be buried in Yucca Mountain, the Nevada site identified as the national depository for nuclear waste. The objective of GNEP is to fission all of the transuranics, aside from process losses. The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) study scaled its cost estimate to 62,000 tons of spent fuel because that is approximately the amount of spent fuel that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act allows to be placed in Yucca Mountain before a second repository in another state is in operation. The huge cost of the GNEP would likely be more of a burden than a help to the future of nuclear power in the United States.

scholarly journals ПЕРСПЕКТИВЫ АТОМНОЙ ЭНЕРГЕТИКИ В ОБЕСПЕЧЕНИИ ЭНЕРГЕТИЧЕСКОЙ И ЭКОЛОГИЧЕСКОЙ БЕЗОПАСНОСТИ РОССИИ

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 41
Author(s):  
Р.М. Яковлев ◽  
И.А. Обухова
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Fuel ◽  
Energy Production ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Spent Nuclear Fuel ◽  
Spent Fuel ◽  
Mox Fuel ◽  
State Corporation ◽  
The City ◽  
Nuclear Power Production

Large-scale nuclear energetics can satisfy demands for all kinds of energy, i.e. it can secure energy safety of Russia and the whole humankind; however, this is associated with a number of daunting problems. With that, this approach is a priority for Russia. The State Corporation RosAtom is involved in the development of nuclear reactors in Russia and abroad on the conditions that the reactors will be supplied with nuclear fuel from Russia and the spent fuel will be returned to Russia for conversion into mixed uranium and plutonium oxide (MOX) fuel. In the city Zheleznogorsk near Krasnoyarsk, the first production line of a plant for treating 2000 tons of spent nuclear fuel annually has been already launched. The principal strategic plan of RosAtom, which has been being realized currently, is to develop nuclear power production based on fuel recycling using fast neutron reactors for generation of plutonium, which may be used in nuclear weapons and is most hazardous for the biosphere. The possibility of accidents associated with radioactive discharges cannot be excluded, and the hazardousness of such accidents in increased by using plutonium-based fuels. The nuclear power-based approach to energy production is costly but also dangerous not only for Russia.

scholarly journals IFMIF-DONES as Paradigm of Institutional Funding in the Way towards Sustainable Energy

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (23) ◽  
pp. 13093
Author(s):  
Rafael Esteban ◽  
Zaida Troya ◽  
Enrique Herrera-Viedma ◽  
Antonio Peña-García
Keyword(s):  
Energy Production ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Sustainable Energy ◽  
Management Planning ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Key Points ◽  
Main Target ◽  
The Future ◽  
Institutional Funding ◽  
The Impact

Although actions promoting sustainable energy production and consumption have been widely approached in the literature, the management of the big scientific projects devoted to these actions have not been considered as a matter of study from the perspective of sustainable development, but almost exclusively from the scientific or technical ones. Experiences all over the world are increasingly demonstrating that the impact of the project phase is more critical than expected. In this sense, the joint international research on clean and more efficient nuclear power, especially fusion, is currently focused on two large projects: ITER and IFMIF-DONES. Although ITER is step by step advancing, IFMIF-DONES still has a long way before it is actually implemented and its main target (the evaluation of the materials to build the future nuclear fusion reactors) is achieved. In this work, the different steps focused on IFMIF-DONES funding and management planning up to date are analysed and, departing from them, some key points on the future development of the project are proposed.

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