Accidents with nuclear energy

Now we tried to do a similar calculation for the risks involved with nuclear energy, and we found that the risks were very small. These calculations have been borne out by the performance over the subsequent 20 years of the nuclear industry, where the accident rate has been extremely low. Nevertheless, it became clear that the public didn t care that we had calculated that the risks were very small. It became a matter of what is called risk perception. Consequently, what we did was to shift lots of our research in this area to risk perception. 

Our perception of the environmental problems associated with nuclear energy is shaped mainly by the safety of nuclear power plants, especially after Ae Three Mile Island accident and, much more, after the Chernobyl one. 

Reactor accidents have been greatly publicized, but there has not been one death associated with an American nuclear reactor accident. However the dependence on automobiles results in more than 40,000 deaths each year. All forms of energy generation, including alternatives like solar and wind involve industrial deaths in the mining, manufacture, and transport of materials they require. Nuclear energy requires the smallest amount of resources and thus has the lowest risk of deaths. 

Nuclear energy is cost competitive with fossil fuel, has very low greenhouse gas emission, and creates far less air pollution. However, fear of potential accidents and intractable issues of waste containment have prevented construction of nuclear power plants in the United States for three decades. 

Although, at the end of the twentieth century, the accident at Chernobyl has made the use of fission reactors (eventually breeders) politically unacceptable, it must be recalled that our society can be run on electricity from nuclear reactors, with hydrogen as the storage medium and fuel for transportation. Fail-safe reactor schemes have been described in the literature. The eventual choice between nuclear energy and renewables will be one of cost. 

However, with reactor incidents, direct loss of life or casualties are extremely rare. In this respect the nuclear record compares well with other energy-related industries (see Appendix 10). There have been accidents at nuclear plants, leading to injury and in some cases deaths. In these, nuclear plant is similar to all other process and power plant. The special feature of nuclear plant is the awesome potential power in the plant and its highly radioactive contents. 

Let me recall, in conclusion, that in spite of many years of operations of dozens of nuclear energy plants (we now have about 50 in operation) so far no accident involving a person was caused by them. Surely, safety measures had to be put into operation, just as semaphores operate to prevent collisions of trains. However, no health has been impaired so far— we have nothing to compare with the 100,000 coal miners affected by the black lung disease. This does not indicate, by any means, that we should relax our attention to safety problems, but it surely does speak against scare stories opposing nuclear power plants. 

In the nuclear energy industry, the scope of risk criteria includes the whole range of risk criteria from societal and individual risk, off-site radioactive release, reactor core damage accident and lower level criteria to mnnerical criteria used in various risk-informed applications. Risk criteria have variable status in different coimtries strict regulatory limits are defined in few coimtries, while indicative target values are used in most coimtries. The ALARP principle is sometimes applied, involving a risk criterion with a limit and an objective. 

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