Fukushima The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was a catastrophic failure at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plants on 11 March 2011. The nuclear power plant was located on a 3.5-square-kilometre site in the towns of Okuma and Futaba in the Futaba District of Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. There were altogether 10 nuclear reactors, with 5 reactors using old designs and the rest using new designs. All the Fukushima plants, including the newer plants, were all based on General Electric(GE) designs. A lucrative contracts had been made between General Electric and Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) to service the GE nuclear plants in Japan. General Electric is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and operates through four divisions: Energy, Technology Infrastructure, Capital Finance and Consumer and Industrial. The oldest Fukushima nuclear reactor was built at 1960s. Unit 1-5 reactors were built with the older design, GE(General Electric) Mark 1 design. To keep the reactors compact and economical, the Mark 1 design had its reactor buildings small. Instead of putting the generators inside the reactor buildings, they are put into neighbouring structures that house turbines. Unfortunately, the turbine buildings were far less sturdy, especially their doors. On the other hand, the reactor buildings were built strong and stable, with thick concrete walls and dual sets of sturdy doors. However, even though the reactor building itself had strong protection, backup power generators are critical safety equipment and it should have been put inside the reactor buildings. The cooling systems of the nuclear plants run on electricity which pulled from the nation's power grid. For situation wh... ... middle of paper ... ...O.4 reactor building. In contrast, reactors No.5 and 6 safely operated their cooling system. The Fukushima plants were all based on GE designs. Hence, after the nuclear disaster , GE was asked for the reason that why they weren't aware of the design fault of the older design. GE who was in charge of the servicing Fukushima plants said it wasn't their fault because Tepco was in charge of any design changes. They also said that the location of the emergency generators should be reviewed and decided by Tepco and regulatory authorities. After the incident, 300,000 people evacuated the area. Although the World Health Organization indicated that evacuees were exposed to little radiation, they are still likely to have radiation-induced health impacts. The inconsistency in applying the improved standards to the nuclear plants had caused the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster.
Nuclear power has grown to be a big percentage of the world’s energy. As of January 18, 2013 in 31 countries 437 nuclear power plant units with an installed electric net capacity of about 372 GW are in operation and 68 plants with an installed capacity of 65 GW are in 15 countries under construction. As of end 2011 the total electricity production since 1951 amounts to 69,760 billion kWh. The cumulative operating experience amounted to 15, 15,080 years by end of 2012. (European Nuclear Society) The change that nuclear power has brought to the world has led to benefits in today’s energy’s usage.
The series of events that occurred on April 26th, 1986 at the Chernobyl Power Plant located in the Ukraine, would be considered one of the worst disasters that the world would ever see. It was supposed to be a routine check “to determine how long the steam-driven turbines at the plant would continue to generate electricity in the event of an electrical blackout” (Worsnop). This seems ironic because a simple test led to such a complicated calamity. During the test, one of the turbines was shut off and the emergency core cooling system was turned off as well. For a simple test, turning off the emergency core cooling system all together might not have one of the best options. They were running the core at low power and by doing so it caused excess xenon to accumulate. By reducing the water flow to the core, the core stared to heat up rapidly causing the reactor power to increase. Finally, they figured that they should remove the control rods from the reactor core as an emergency shutdown method. However, all the events leading up to this point did the opposite of shutting...
...r. Iodine 131, another radioactive element, can dilute very quickly in the air, but if it is deposited on grass eaten by cows, the cows then re-concentrate it in their milk. Absorbed into the body's thyroid gland in a concentrated dose, Iodine 131 can cause cancer. In the Chernobyl disaster, the biggest health effect has been cases of thyroid cancer especially in children living near the nuclear plant. Therefore, because of the Chernobyl disaster we know to test the grass, soil, and milk for radiation. Also, an evacuation of the Chernobyl area was not ordered until over 24 hours after the incident. Japanese authorities evacuated 200,000 people from the area of Fukushima within hours of the initial alert. From the mistakes and magnitude of the disaster at Chernobyl, the world learned how to better deal with the long and short term effect of a Nuclear Fallout.
On April 26th, 1986, operators at the Chernobyl Power Plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine, ran what they thought to be a routine safety test. But fate was not on the side of these operators. Without warning, reactor #4 became unstable, as it had been operating at a low power for a possible shutdown and the reactor’s design caused it to be unsafe at this level of power. Internal temperatures rose. Attempts to cool the system produced the opposite effect. Instantly, the nuclear core surged with power. At 1:23 p.m., the reactor exploded. The first blast ripped off the reactor's steel roof. The second blast released a large plume of radiation into the sky. Flames engulfed the building. For ten long days, fire fighters and power plant workers attempted to overcome the inferno. Thirty-one of them died of radiation poisoning. Chernobyl was the worst nuclear disaster in history. It unleashed radiation hundreds of times greater than the atomic bombs exploded over Japan during World War II. [1]
Leading the disaster, Nuclear reactors require an element cooling with a particular finished objective to uproot the created warmth delivered by radioactive rote. Despite when not delivering power, reactors still make some warmth, which must be cleared with a specific end goal to forestall harm to the reactor center. Cooling is by and large refined through fluid stream, water in Chernobyl s case. The issue at the Chernobyl plant was that taking after an emergency shutdown of all force, diesel generators were expected to run the cooling pumps. These generators took around a minute to fulfill full speed, which was respected an inadmissible long time for the reactor to be without cooling. It was recommended that the rotational power of the backing off steam
I. (Gain Attention and Interest): March 11, 2011. 2:45 pm. Operations at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant continued as usual. At 2:46 pm a massive 9.0 earthquake strikes the island of Japan. All nuclear reactors on the island shut down automatically as a response to the earthquake. At Fukushima, emergency procedures are automatically enabled to shut down reactors and cool spent nuclear fuel before it melts-down in a catastrophic explosion. The situation seems under control, emergency diesel generators located in the basement of the plant activate and workers breathe a sigh of relief that the reactors are stabilizing. Then 41 minutes later at 3:27 pm the unthinkable occurs. As workers monitored the situation from within the plant, citizens from the adjacent town ran from the coastline as a 49 foot tsunami approached. The tsunami came swiftly and flooded the coastline situated Fukushima plant. Emergency generators were destroyed and cooling systems failed. Within hours, a chain of events led to an explosion of reactor 1 of the plant. One by one in the subsequent days reactors 2, and 3 suffered similar fates as explosions destroyed containment cases and the structures surrounding the reactors (Fukushima Accident). Intense amount...
Humans were a victims of the Chernobyl nuclear accident which affected their lifestyle and their health. People of Chernobyl were evacuated to clean and safe areas. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) (2006), there were 116 000 people who were evacuated from Chernobyl region to other safe areas in the summe...
The “World Nuclear Power Plants in Operation”. Nuclear Energy Institute. April. The. 2014. The 'Standard' of the 'Standard'.
Nuclear power has always been a controversial issue because of its inherent danger and the amount of waste that the plants produce. Once considered a relatively safe form for generating energy, nuclear power has caused more problems than it has solved. While it has reduced the amount of traditional natural resources (fossil fuels), used to generate power like coal, wood, and oil, nuclear generating plants have become anachronisms. Maintaining them and keeping them safe has become a problem of immense proportion. As the plants age and other technology becomes available, what to do with these “eyesores” is a consuming issue for many government agencies and environmental groups. No one knows what to do about the problem and in many areas of the world, another nuclear meltdown is an accident waiting to happen. Despite a vast array of safety measures, a break in reactor pipe or a leak in a containment vessel, could spell another environmental disaster for the world.
mental degradation. The mass production of goods, in manufacturing industries, more so has led to a lot of pollutants being released into the atmosphere. These pollutants continue to degrade the environment. There are several forms of pollutions that continue to be heavily experienced as a result of the activities of Multi-National Corporations. The two most adverse types of pollution are water pollution and air pollution. They affect a lot of the systems that are in play.
The energy industry is beginning to change. In today’s modern world, governments across the globe are shifting their focuses from traditional sources of power, like the burning coal and oil, to the more complex and scientific nuclear power supply. This relatively new system uses powerful fuel sources and produces little to no emissions while outputting enough energy to fulfill the world’s power needs (Community Science, n.d.). But while nuclear power seems to be a perfect energy source, no power production system is without faults, and nuclear reactors are no exception, with their flaws manifesting in the form of safety. Nuclear reactors employ complex systems involving pressure and heat. If any of these systems dysfunctions, the reactor can leak or even explode releasing tons of highly radioactive elements into the environment. Anyone who works at or near a nuclear reactor is constantly in danger of being exposed to a nuclear incident similar to the ones that occurred at the Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi plants. These major accidents along with the unresolved problems with the design and function of nuclear reactors, as well as the economic and health issues that nuclear reactors present serve to show that nuclear energy sources are not worth the service that they provide and are too dangerous to routinely use.
Nuclear power, the use of exothermic nuclear processes to produce an enormous amount of electricity and heat for domestic, medical, military and industrial purposes i.e. “By the end of 2012 2346.3 kilowatt hours (KWh) of electricity was generated by nuclear reactors around the world” (International atomic energy agency Vienna, 2013, p.13). However, with that been said it is evident that the process of generating electricity from a nuclear reactor has numerous health and environmental safety issues.
The biggest damage is the radiation exposal to the people. 530,000 local recovery workers were exposed the radiation, the effective dose is same as fifty years of natural radiation exposure (IAEA, 1996). 31 nuclear power staffs and emergency workers were died by direct effect, and the Chernobyl Forum anticipates the total num...
There was a multitude of causes of the disaster in Japan. The first cause was a 9.0 magnitude earthquake that occurred off the coast of Japan. Japan is located in “The Ring of Fire,” an area in the Pacific Ocean that has multiple faults and earthquakes (Pedersen 13). Tectonic plates shifted off the North Pacific coast of Japan and created a massive earthquake. The next cause was a thirty-three foot wall of water that swept over cities and farmland in Japan (Branigan 2). Martin Fackler, a journalist, stated, “The quake churned up a devastating tsunami” (Fackler 3). The tsunami reached speeds of 497 miles per hour while approaching Japan (Fackler 3). The third and final reason of the disaster was that the cooling systems at multiple nuclear power plants failed. At Fukushima, a nuclear power plant in Sendai, Japan, the radioactive rods began to overheat due to the absence of water, which cools it. Explosions occurred at three of the reactors, which spewed radiation into the air (“Comparing nuclear power plant crises”). In conclusion, the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power plant issues were the causes of the disaster in Japan, but they also had a myriad of effects.
...ut. It was caused by a faulty design and poor observance of safety. Fukushima was also caused by a faulty design, considering the area it was built on was susceptible to tsunami. One of the reasons why the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant was closed was because of the strong public opinion against utilizing nuclear energy. If only the people were well informed and not prejudiced against building a plant that would help our economy and ease our poverty a little, then we would probably be a little more successful right now. Another reason is because of the area where the power plant was built—on an earthquake prone area near a volcanic formation, a threat to public health. Again, overall, with proper maintenance, engineering, and expertise, nuclear energy is a very good investment, especially for the Philippines which is in need of a cheap but beneficial source of energy.