Nuclear Wastes / Accidents Brief

     Nuclear waste is the material that nuclear fuel becomes after it is used in a reactor. It looks exactly like the fuel that was loaded into the reactor, assemblies of metal rods enclosing stacked-up ceramic pellets. But since nuclear reactions have occurred, the contents aren’t quite the same. Before producing power, the fuel was mostly Uranium, oxygen, and steel. Afterwards, many Uranium atoms have split into various isotopes of almost all of the transition metals on your periodic table of the elements. The waste, sometimes called spent fuel, is dangerously radioactive, and remains so for thousands of years. When it first comes out of the reactor, it is so toxic that if you stood within a few meters of it while it was unshielded, you would receive a lethal radioactive dose within a few seconds and would die of acute radiation sickness within a few days. The spent fuel is never unshielded. It is kept underwater (water is an excellent shield) for a few years until the radiation decays to levels that can be shielded by concrete in large storage casks. The final disposal of this spent fuel is a hot topic, and is often an argument against the use of nuclear reactors. Options are deep geologic storage and recycling.

     Nuclear power is really powerful. Nuclear energy generated 797 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2014. Because it is efficient source, human cannot stop using nuclear power even though the side effect of nuclear power is dangerous and risky. Each nuclear energy facility generates about $470 million annually in sales of goods and services in the local community.

     The first nuclear accident that I was able to find is in Chalk River, Canada in 1952. It’s INES level is 5, which is same as Fukushima accident. The nuclear energy industry began making immediate safety improvements as part of a self-assessment of U.S. nuclear facilities within days of the 2011 accident at Fukushima Daiichi. But accident at Chernobyl still has the highest INES level. Once nuclear accident happen, it is hard to recover. Nobody can take control of nuclear accident, so human need to prevent and be careful with nuclear energy.