CRITICAL ISSUES FORUM

Nuclear Renaissance: Risks versus Benefits

BENCHMARK 3

The Author: Valeriya Belan

Form 10B
Linguistic Gymnasia № 164

The Advisor: Nelli Porseva

The Teacher of English
Linguistic Gymnasia № 164

Zelenogorsk

Krasnoyarsk Region

Russia

2008

CONTENTS

I. The main counter-arguments for nuclear energy using

1. Environment: problems with pollution

2. Widely-known nuclear accidents - causes and consequences

a) Three Mile Island accident

b) Chernobyl catastrophe

c) Kashiwazaki-Kariwa accident

II. Lessons of the past

III. Future forecasts

IV. Conclusion

V. Resources

Introduction

Aim of work was:

· To demonstrate an understanding of one of the challenges related to nuclear energy

· To synthesize and evaluate the information I have gained.

· To create my own interpretations about world events and concerns.

I. The main counter-arguments for nuclear energy using

Nowadays, looking at all benefits of nuclear energy, it is possible to say that nuclear technologies have really good chances to be developed. Using nuclear possibilities in only peaceful way people may solve a problem of potential energy crisis.

But with growing number of nuclear power plants of today’s technical level, the percentage of dangerous situations will grow. The majority of the most popular and strong counter arguments about building new nuclear power plants are connected with

· Environment

· Well-known nuclear accidents

1. Environment: problems with pollution

The first argument about environmental pollution can be rather easily denied by the table of comparison of CO₂ emissions caused by different sources of energy.

CO2 emissions for energy sources per kilowatt hour (gCO2-e/kWh)

Natural gas	386	Nuclear (OECD)	11-22
World Av.	540	Nuclear (Strom & Smith)	84-122^24
Coal	755	Nuclear (ISA, Uni. Of Sydney)	10-130^25
Nuclear (Oko Institute)	31^26

[1, p.10]

It is easily seen how large the difference is. But people, who are absolutely against using nuclear energy, can say that in case of the accident the damage will be long-lasting. They can cite as an example the most widely-known nuclear accidents. To judge if these arguments are truthful, we need to remember three most widely-known accidents.

2. Widely-known nuclear accidents

a) Three Mile Island accident – causes and consequences

“On March 28, an accident in the cooling system occurs at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, releasing radiation into the atmosphere and requiring evacuation of the area. Although no deaths are recorded, the core of reactor is damaged beyond repair.” [2, p. 103]

Three Mile Island accident is a good example of all most widespread problems. It showed a weakness of technologies, problems with the environment irradiation, as the only result and effect on people’s opinion about necessity of nuclear energy.

“Fifty per cent of the core had been destroyed, and 20 tons of uranium had melted. New safety and training standards were introduced, but the United States made no more plans to build new reactors.” [3]

The weakest factor – a human factor – was the reason of Three Mile Island accident. The main mistakes were made:

· in technical equipment (“The monitoring equipment, however, gave an unclear picture of the situation, so the technicians did not believe it”[3]

· in control of the work of the station (the reserve pump at the beginning couldn’t work – it was turned off after the check shortly before the accident)

· by operators (unusual parameters were noticed only after 2 hours and 20 minutes after beginning of malfunctioning).

The most interesting fact is that this accident is an excellent example of things which could be avoided only by paying enough attention to the system of controlling the work of the plant.

“The radioactivity that got to the environment was only 1/40000 part of that of the Chernobyl accident.” [4] It is possible to say that Three Mile Island is only some kind of warning, which must draw people’s attention not to the problem of security, the problem of nuclear proliferation or using nuclear weapon but to the problem of qualification and preparation of specialists. If people don’t want to control dangerous industry spheres, where accidents can happen even without irresponsible behavior of the personnel, than all the talks about danger of the nuclear fuel cycle or of nuclear waste products are not serious.

But Three Mile Island is not the only large accident. Chernobyl catastrophe showed us a much more scary variant of further events.

b) Chernobyl accident – causes and consequences

It is a photo from Pripyat’, a town next to Chernobyl nuclear plant station, dated by 18 of March 2004 – the city is absolutely empty.

[5]

Pripyat’ is not the only town which was abandoned. Also there are Chernobyl-2, villages Krasne, Zalyesje, Ryudki. This fact demonstrates how large and how dangerous the irradiated area is.

Chernobyl accident is the biggest in the whole history of nuclear energy. At first time as the reason of the accident only mistakes of the personnel were mentioned. But in 1993 a new report was published – it showed that serous mistakes were made also in the construction of the reactor:

· Reactor was designed incorrectly;

· Personnel wasn’t informed about possible dangerous situations;

· People made some mistakes, mostly because of absence of the information about the reactor; [6]

But, nevertheless, all these mistakes were made by people.

c) Kashiwazaki-Kariwa accident – causes and consequences

Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant is the only of all three cases, when an earthquake was the reason for the radiation releases. It was caused by the position of the plant – it was built on rather unstable layer of the sand, and because of it 2007 Chūetsu offshore earthquake, which epicenter was 19 kilometers away from the plant, was able to damage Unit 3 and cause a fire.

II. Lessons of the past

Nowadays the memory about catastrophes is still alive. Since 16 of April there has been an exhibition in Zelenogorsk devoted to Chernobyl accident. It is called “The lessons of Chernobyl”. Information about liquidators of Chernobyl catastrophe, building of the famous sarcophagus and people from Zelenogorsk, who didn’t come back from that place, is displayed on this exhibition.

These are photos, which illustrate our words: here are posters, devoted to the catastrophe – a sun from barbed wire, the “Life is over” slogan can tell a lot about people’s opinion about it.

(All three photos were made by Valeriya Belan)

The exhibition shows also how the USSR government talked about this accident and extremely dangerous work of liquidation. Building of sarcophagus was just a point of bravery and a question of patriotism. Nothing was said about the real danger. It is also a very important addition to all the details of people relationship to the work of nuclear power stations.

III. Future forecasts

All nuclear accidents are also arguments for starting thinking about perspectives of nuclear energy. But technical progress can’t be stopped. This table shows that nowadays more and more countries are going to build nuclear reactors on their territory.

Country	Planned	Proposed	Country	Planned	Proposed
Argentina	0	1	South Korea	7	0
Armenia	0	1	Kazakhstan	0	1
Brazil	1	4	Lithuania	0	1
Bulgaria	2	0	Mexico	0	1
Canada	4	0	Pakistan	2	2
China	23	54	Romania	0	3
Czech Republic	0	2	Russia	8	18
Egypt	0	1	Slovakia	2	0
France	1	1	Slovenia	0	1
India	4	15	South Africa	1	24
Indonesia	0	4	Turkey	3	0
Iran	2	3	Ukraine	2	0
Israel	0	1	USA	2	21
Japan	11	1	Vietnam	0	2
North Korea	1	0

[1]

Only 7 from 29 countries have abandoned the idea of building nuclear reactors. So, there is one main question now – if people use nuclear energy, how perspective it could be in comparison with other, less dangerous, possible variants? Here is a table of capacity comparison between different renewable energy sources.

Energy source	Technically possible stocks (Q/year)	Economically possible stocks (Q/year)
Hydropower	0,065	0,030
Geothermal power	1,000	<0,001
Solar Power	10,00	0,006
Wind power	0,040	<0,001
Energy of ocean waves	0,003	<10^-4
Total	13,1	<0,05

[7, p. 273]

To make the analysis of energetic potential more understandable, we need to know that the capacity of only nuclear reactors based on thermal neutrons can cover the energy of all renewable sources and it will be something about 20 Q. [7, p. 277]

The possibilities of reactors-breeders are much bigger – they allow

· to use 30-45% of nature Uranium (the percent of using nature Uranium in reactors on thermal neutrons is much more less)

· to use poor ores, where there is less than 0,1% of Uranium and which are not used nowadays.

The capacity of such type of reactors with the account of all Uranium resources (using Thorium, Deuterium and Lithium will be also possible) can be estimated as 2100 Q. [7, p. 279]

Having such information about each way of energy production it is possible to talk about three ways of power industry development:

· Development of traditional energy sources using. This way will require changing of parity between all the extracted sources in favor of the coal.
This way development will include problems of transport (because of the coal stocks in the world), ecology(CO₂ emissions are huge) and technique(the problem of getting liquid fuel and gas from the coal)

· Development of renewable energy using. This way includes problems of economy(in the majority of the world parts it is unprofitable and economic consequences are hardly estimated)

· Development of nuclear energy production. It requires changing some principles in the sphere of technology and people’s opinion about the nuclear power. (The last option includes the question of security and qualification of personnel)

IV. Conclusion

Nuclear energy nowadays is the most perspective way of energy production. It can’t be neglected because of the accidents or dangerous situations, which were caused by people in the majority of cases. Certainly, these situations can’t be forgotten. Developing this industry, taking into account all the existing experience, will be the best output for this situation. However, people shouldn’t be sure that nuclear technologies are the last stage of the development in the sphere of energy production.

VI. Resources

1. Barnaby, Frank and Kemp, James, “Too hot to handle?”, Oxford Research Group (Briefing Paper, July 2007)

2. Diehl, Sarah and Clay Moltz, James, “Nuclear Weapons and Nonproliferation”, Contemporary World Issues (Santa Barbara, California, 2002)

3. “Meltdown at Three Mile Island”, printed in Spotlight # 3, 2007 (Sportlight Verlag GmbH, Planegg/Munchen, Germany)

4. http://www.npp.hu/tortenelem/balesetek2-e.htm

5. http://voffka.com/archives/2006/02/13/024603.html

6. http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A7%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B1%D1%8B%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%8F

7. Pshakin G.M. and others, “Nuclear nonproliferation”, (Moscow Engineer Physicist Institute, 2006)