IS NUCLEAR ENERGY SAFE?

An energy source heats water to make steam; steam turns a turbine; the turbine generates electricity. But a nuclear reactor differs from fossil fuel-based plants in that it doesn’t burn anything and doesn’t produce any carbon-dioxide emissions. Zero. However, it’s based on radioactive materials and it produces radioactive waste. That’s where the concerns lie. I think it’s fair to say that whenever the topic of nuclear energy comes up, the question of its safety is high on the list of discussion points.

It’s a complicated topic, but to give you some food for thought, I interviewed a person from either side of the issue. First, I spoke with Tom Kauffman, senior media relations manager for the Nuclear Energy Institute in Washington, D.C. Kauffman has been in the industry for more than two decades, held a senior reactor operator license and was at Three Mile Island when the accident occurred in 1979. Out of that conversation, I came up with a list of questions, which I emailed to Edwin Lyman.

Lyman is a senior staff scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, D.C. His research focuses on the prevention of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism, and prior to working at the UCS, he was the president of the Nuclear Control Institute. Lyman emailed his answers.

Below are Kauffman’s and Lyman’s responses to some of the main safety concerns hovering over the future of nuclear energy. Neither one saw the other’s answers, as I did not want them to debate each other, but rather provide information about these issues from their point of view. Since I spoke with Kauffman first, I’ll put his answers first. Here are their responses to this controversial issue:

Oftentimes the topic of Chernobyl comes up when nuclear energy is mentioned. Could a Chernobyl-type accident happen in the United States at a nuclear power plant?

Kauffman: No. A Chernobyl-type accident can’t happen in the United States. It’s physically impossible. The reactor was a completely different design. All of the U.S. nuclear plants are self-limiting. They can’t run out of control and explode. The Chernobyl reactor wasn’t self-limiting. That design is banned in the United States and in most other nations. People who bring it up are using it as a scare tactic. My Subaru is as likely to blow up like Chernobyl as one of our nuclear reactors.

Lyman: The short answer is yes. An accident resulting in a large radiological release to the environment comparable to or worse than that of Chernobyl could definitely occur at a U.S. nuclear power plant. While the particular accident mechanism resulting in a catastrophic release of radioactivity would be different for a U.S. light-water reactor than for a Chernobyl-type reactor, the outcome could be similar. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has a policy that if a core-melt accident occurs (such as the one at Three Mile Island in 1979), then the probability that the event could result in a large radiological release should be less than 10 percent.

According to computer simulations, some U.S. reactors would comfortably meet this limit, while it is less clear for others. Some reactor-containment buildings could be ruptured by a hydrogen explosion, for example. In addition, when a plant is down for a refueling outage, the containment building is open to the environment, but the fuel remains hot and is still vulnerable to melting if cooling is interrupted. And finally, terrorists with the tactical skill to attack a nuclear plant would find it fairly easy to blow a hole in the containment building.

Reference :

1. IS NUCLEAR ENERGY SAFE?, Discovery News from world wide website : http://news.discovery.com/tech/is-nuclear-energy-safe.html