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How much safe is Nuclear Power Plant?

By
Dr. Nitish Priyadarshi
Geologist
Email: nitish.priyadarshi@gmail.com

Japan has raised its assessment of the accident at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear
power plant to the worst rating on an international scale, putting the disaster on par with
the 1986 Chernobyl explosion.

The decision to raise the alert level to 7 from 5 on the scale amounts to an admission that
the accident at the nuclear facility, is likely to have substantial and long lasting
consequences for health and for the environment.

Living with radiation can in fact be frightening. Plants making electricity with nuclear
power plants and nuclear-weapons materials also pollute our environment. Three Mile
Island, Chernobyl, and now Fukushima Daiichi as well as other nuclear power plant
accidents, have alarmed us. Nuclear waste is piling up.

What is radiation anyway? Although the term is broad enough to include sunlight and
heat, radio waves and microwaves, it is most often used to mean ionizing radiation. Every
radioactive substance contains unstable atoms, or radionuclides. They want to become
something else- something stable- so they change or decay. With each change energy is
released. A radionuclide may transform itself many times before becoming stable. An
atom of radioactive uranium 238 goes through 14 changes before stabilizing as lead 206.
These sequences are known as decay chains.

If body tissues and cells become ionized, abnormalities in DNA can result. Cancer and
birth defects can also result from exposure to ionizing radiation.

Even more than Three Mile Island, the explosion at the Chernobyl power plant in soviet
Ukraine confirmed the worst nuclear fears. Poor design magnified operator negligence to
cause disaster. The explosion sent the graphite slabs of the reactor core through the roof,
setting it afire and spewing radioactive materials around the world. Twenty percent of the
plant’s radioactive iodine escaped, along with 10 to 20 percent of its radioactive cesium.
Thirty persons died; 237 suffered severe radioactive injury. Chernobyl affected the health
of many people throughout Russia. Around 600,000 were classified as being
‘significantly exposed’ and will have their health monitored their whole lives.

The main economic cost of the Chernobyl explosion was from the effect the fallout had
on the agriculture. Enormous amount of milk in Poland, Hungary, Austria and Sweden
were made unusable by the contamination from radioiodine and radioiodine and
radiocesium. Also many countries across Europe had numerous amounts of vegetation
burned because of contamination. A ban on many agricultural goods was placed in
Eastern Europe. The longest effect the radiation had was on the reindeer and sheep in
Sweden.

The Three Mile Island accident was a core meltdown in Unit 2 (a pressurized water
reactor ) of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in Dauphin County,
Pennsylvania near Harrisburg, United States in 1979.

The power plant was owned and operated by General Public Utilities and Metropolitan
Edison. It was the most significant accident in the history of the USA commercial nuclear
power generating industry, resulting in the release of up to 481 P Bq (13 million curies)
of radioactive gases, and less than 740 GBq (20 curies) of iodine-131.

On December 12, 1952 a partial meltdown of a reactor's uranium core at the Chalk River
plant near Ottawa, Canada, resulted after the accidental removal of four control rods.
Although millions of gallons of radioactive water poured into the reactor, there were no
injuries.

On October 1957 fire destroyed the core of a plutonium-producing reactor at Britain's


Windscale nuclear complex - since renamed Sellafield - sending clouds of radioactivity
into the atmosphere. An official report said the leaked radiation could have caused dozens
of cancer deaths in the vicinity of Liverpool.
Other accident took place on Winter 1957-'58 when a serious accident occurred during
the winter of 1957-58 near the town of Kyshtym in the Urals. A Russian scientist who
first reported the disaster estimated that hundreds died from radiation sickness.

On January 1,1992 four tons of heavy water spilt at Rajasthan nuclear power plant
(India).

Lots more are there to be listed.

Fears of radiation hazards from nuclear energy arise on the following counts:

1. release of radioactivity into the atmosphere.


2. doubts on safety of operating nuclear reactors and associated health risks.
3. management and safe disposal of radioactive waste.
4. possibilities of nuclear plant accidents including sabotage.
5. risk of proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Nuclear power plants are subject to a number of hazards that may originate from outside.
Among natural hazards are earthquakes, flooding of the site, ground settlement, etc.
Other hazards could be accidents in near by industries, fire, aircraft crash, or sabotage
such as bombing and missile attacks during war and terrorist activities.

Accidents in nuclear power plants in the past have been attributed mainly to operation
errors, design deficiencies and a series of equipments failures. But the accident in Japan
is the first case due to earthquake.

Controversies regarding actual number of deaths, the quantity of radioactivity released


and delayed effects still persist.

The demand for energy in several countries is being substantially met through nuclear
reactors. It is feared that the phenomenal increase in the number of reactors during the
last 40 years or so has increased the possibility of exposure to radiation hazards and
accidents.

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