After I read Michael Podgers' article ""Nuclear power is wasteful,"" I began to wonder if Podgers had done the research needed to know how a nuclear power plant works before forming his opinion. He brought up nuclear accidents such as Three Mile Island and Chernobyl without actually explaining what happened. I want to clarify some very important details Podgers left out.
First, it's important to understand how modern nuclear power plants work. The uranium must first be processed in order to enrich it with uranium-235, an element that splits, creating energy. After the enrichment process the element gets manufactured into pellets about the size of a pencil eraser.
They're are grouped together and loaded into the reactor. A pressurized thick steel vessel surrounds the reactor. On the outside is a 4-5 foot thick case made of steel and concrete. According to nei.org, the reactors are constructed to survive anything.
In Podgers' article, he mentions two accidents, TMI and Chernobyl, without explaining what happened. Chernobyl was an awful accident, but this could never happen with the nuclear power plants in the U.S. Russian reactors like Chernobyl use graphite to moderate the chain reaction to make sure there isn't a runaway reaction. Graphite is considered a positive moderator coefficient, meaning it's more unstable as a moderator and coolant where as water is more stable and efficient. All nuclear power plants in the U.S. are either boiling water reactors or pressurized reactors. The energy from splitting uranium-235 atoms creates steam to turn a turbine creating electrical energy. In addition, Chernobyl didn't have the second thick containment shell, which all western style nuclear power plants have.
The second accident, TMI, is considered the most dangerous nuclear accidents in U.S. history ""even though it led to no deaths or injuries to plant workers or members of the nearby community,"" according to nrc.gov. At TMI, the water stopped cooling the reactor and it got too hot and began to melt the reactor. The containment shells were never breached and no massive amounts of radiation leaked out into the environment.
When nuclear power plant accidents happen or something doesn't work quite right, the U.S. NRC does not just shrug their shoulders hoping it won't happen again. They change how power plants run so it doesn't happen again. As the NRC concluded, ""There is no doubt that the accident at Three Mile Island permanently changed both the nuclear industry and the NRC.""
Nuclear power in the U.S. and globally is something that should not be ignored nor pushed aside. The U.S already gets 20 percent of it's electricity from nuclear while France gets 78 percent of its electricity from nuclear power. Before the earthquake and tsunami, 24 percent of Japan's electricity came from nuclear power according to the World Nuclear Association. What happened in Japan was horrendous, but the plant survived the 5th largest earthquake ever recorded.
That is an amazing architectural feat! The ultimate damage at Fukushima Daiichi appears to have been caused by the tsunami, which obviously had not ever been envisioned since it literally swept over a mile inland pulling thousands of humans to their deaths. The damage done at Fukushima will not be ignored and will only lead to improvements of plants in Japan and the U.S. From nei.org, ""Japan's Nuclear Safety Commission as the government on April 28 to review the ability of the country's nuclear power plants to withstand earthquakes."" This isn't the time to be pushing away nuclear power; it's time countries start investing in this source of emission-free electricity.
—Britta Gjermo
