Question

Radioactive waste can remain dangerous for a hundred thousand years. GE Hitachi created a new power plant that can use radioactive waste and reduce the storage requirements to 300 years. In GEH’s view, what is generally considered to be “nuclear waste” these days is not really waste at all. Light Water Reactor (LWR) used nuclear fuel is composed of 95 percent uranium, 1 percent transuranics, and 4 percent fission products. Many of these transuranic isotopes have long half-lives, which can create long-term engineering challenges for geologic disposal. By using electro-metallurgical separations, PRISM is designed to perform the recycling of the 96 percent of the fissionable material (uranium and transuranics) remaining in used nuclear fuel.

Think about our current and possible future uses of nuclear power. In your initial post, please discuss the following questions:

What do you see as potential problems?

What do you see as the dangers today and in the future?

If you were in the position to make decisions about the output of nuclear power production, what would you do and why?

Answer 1

Potential Problems due to use of nuclear energy.

( 1 ) There are no perfect nuclear waste management systems available at present. So most of the waste is being disposed in specially selected locations or buried underground.

Most of the times it is disposed in oceans. Any contact of this hazardous waste with plants or animal life leads to their death and even may effect other life forms around.

2. Most of the nuclear waste are long lived radioactive materials. In future they might easily come into contact with surrounding life forms or there is potential chance of contamination of the environment in the place where they are dumped.

3. Transporting the fuel is too a risky one which should be handled carefully.

4. Risk of accidents in the nuclear power plant. If an accident occurs in the power plant it causes severe damge to both human and plant life in regions several kilometers around the plant.

5. Storing the waste is too a big problem. Generally they are kept in steel cylinders which are again tightly placed in concrete boxes or cylinders. But there is every chance that they may break and radiation enters the surroundings.

Dangers today and tomorrow

1. At present there are no methods to treat or recycle the nuclear waste. So most of it is being buried underground.

Sometimes it is left into the ocean. This is causing severe damage to both plant and animal life and to the environment.

2. Cost of repairing a nuclear plant is expensive. So if an accident at present or in future really occurs only thing that can be done is evacuation of the areas surrounding the nuclear plant up to some kilometers. Even the places may not fit for people to live in nearby future.

3. Even the storage , transportation and recycling of nuclear fuel is very expensive. So most of the times , waste is being left and disposed without recycling. This cause severe environment related problems.

4. Since the radioactive fuels and waste are long lived , they are severe threat to future generations if not properly disposed.

5. Another problem is the maintenance of nuclear power plants which are shut down. A closed plant too needs a close watch every time as most of the unused fuel and radioactive waste may still exist. Any leakage of this radiation too causes serious damage.

Decision on nuclear power production

1.About 11 % of total power produced worldwide is from nuclear fuel.

So one cannot foolishly stop the nuclear power production suddenly. 30% of energy produced in US is based on nuclear fuel. So if we stop the running of these power plants at once it will lead to energy crisis.

2. Nuclear fuel is clean form of energy. It causes zero air pollution. Actually the waste produced at present from nuclear plants is safe if handled properly.

3. So we should gradually decrease our dependence on nuclear power and turn towards other available pollution free fuels.

4. One should try to develop possible nuclear fuel waste management methods so that it can be used without any harm

5.So I would gradually lessen the use of nuclear power while trying to develop possible waste management methods.

6. At the same time I would try to encourage the use to other renewable and non conventional energy resources so that our dependence on nuclear fuel would automatically decrease.