Industry, nuclear power Plants

Generally, the coimnunity more readily accepts natural risks such as those of hurricanes, floods, storms, natural foods, and drugs than man-made risks such as those from industry, nuclear power plants, pesticides, food additives, and synthetic drags. 

Nuclear energy Nuclear facilities Nuclear fission Nuclear fuel Nuclear fuel elements Nuclear fuels Nuclear industry Nuclear power plants Nuclear reactors Radioactive decontamination Radioactive waste disposal Radioactive wastes Spent nuclear fuels... 

Chemical-Process Vessels. Explosion-bonded products are used in the manufacture of process equipment for the chemical, petrochemical, and petroleum industries where the corrosion resistance of an expensive metal is combined with the strength and economy of another metal. AppHcations include explosion cladding of titanium tubesheet to Monel, hot fabrication of an explosion clad to form an elbow for pipes in nuclear power plants, and explosion cladding titanium and steel for use in a vessel intended for terephthaHc acid manufacture. 

Safety provisions have proven highly effective. The nuclear power industry in the Western world, ie, outside of the former Soviet Union, has made a significant contribution of electricity generation, while surpassing the safety record of any other principal industry. In addition, the environmental record has been outstanding. Nuclear power plants produce no combustion products such as sulfuric and nitrous oxides or carbon dioxide (qv), which are... 

The sum total of risks of the nuclear fuel cycle, most of which are associated with conventional industrial safety, are greater than those associated with nuclear power plant operation (30,35—39). However, only 1% of the radiological risk is associated with the nuclear fuel cycle so that nuclear power plant operations are the dominant risk (40). Pubhc perception, however, is that the disposition of nuclear waste poses the dominant risk. 

The largest consumers of water in the United States are thermal power plants (eg, steam and nuclear power plants) and the iron and steel, pulp and paper, petroleum refining, and food-processing industries. They consume >60% of the total industrial water requirements (see also Power generation Wastes, industrial). 

Annual Reports of Gumulative System and Gomponent Reliability for Period from July 1, 1974, through December 31, 1982,serves as a source of engineering and failure statistics for the nuclear industry. It contains data for most components used in nuclear power plants. 

Flood Event Frequency Estimates were developed from flooding events in nuclear power plants with adjustments for plant-specific features and data. The data were from the IPE Surry flood analysis, industry sources, and licensing event reports (LERs). Some plant specific models were developed for the circulating water (CW) and service water (SW) lines... 

The external events PSA was based on standard methods used for commercial reactor PSAs, Fire risk was estimated from commercial nuclear power plant data combined with industrial fire information. The seismic hazard was evaluated using a combination of the EPRI and LLNL ( UREG/CR-.3250) databases. Wind hazards were analyzed by EQE, Inc., using NRC-based nicihodulogy. 

Lisk, K, C., 1972 Nuclear Power Plant Systems and Equipment Industrial Press, NY. 

Probabilistic safety assessment has had its greatest push in relation to the assessment ni risk associated with nuclear power plant operation as documented in the author s previous hook This new book, besides updating and reorganizing the nuclear portions of the previous text, entures into I he salety as.sessment of chemical facilities, another important industry dri ver of probabilistic s.ifety assessment methods and applications. 

It should be clear that a complete FMEA approach is not practical for the evaluation of production facility safety systems. This is because (1) the cost of failure is not as great as for nuclear power plants or rockets, for which this technology has proven useful (2) production facility design projects cannot support the engineering cost and lead time associated with such analysis (3) regulatory bodies are not staffed to be able to critically analyze the output of an FMEA for errors in subjective judgment and most importantly, (4) there are similarities to the design of all production facilities that have allowed industry to develop a modified FME.A approach that can satisfy all these objections. 

According to a recent report [11], the nuclear power plant was the focus of the designers attention the standards used for the nuclear power plant were more stringent than those for the rest of the submarine. In the process industries utilities, storage areas and offplots often get less attention than the main units and are involved in disproportionately more incidents. 

Nonprocess Refers to industries that do not comprise a part of the CPI as their primary function, but which use comparable or equivalent complex equipment systems to perform their function, such as nuclear power plants, fossil fuel plants, and offshore oil rigs. 

The NPRDS is an industry-wide system for monitoring the performance of selected systems and components at U.S. commercial nuclear power plants. Information in NPRDS is derived from a standardized format input report prepared by U.S. nuclear plant licensees. The plants are as)ced to submit failure reports on catastrophic events and degraded failures within the defined reportable scope reporting of incipient events is optional. Command faults are not reportable unless they malce an entire system unavailable. In addition, the plants are as)ced to file component engineering reports on all components within the selected systems and reportable scope. These reports contain detailed design data, operating characteristics, and performance data on the selected systems and components (over 3000 components, from approximately 30 systems, per unit). The selected systems are primarily safety systems. 

EPRI s NSAC surveyed the U.S. nuclear power plant industry in order to determine diesel generator (DG) reliability. For each of 154 diesel generators,... 

Today s situation is virtually the reverse. No new nuclear power plants are under construction in countries that have a competitive electricity market Also, because of World Bank and other lenders reluctance to assist construction of nuclear plant, there are questions how many of the 25 or so reactors, now under construction, will be completed. In countries where public opinion matters, people perceive the risks, but see few benefits, whilst the electricity industry and governments, with a few exceptions, such as France and S. Korea, are too concerned about the vociferous opposition to this power source to do anything, but sit on... 

The spent firel issue is central to long-term fuel cycle policy, not simply because large volumes are threatening to clog the arteries of the nuclear power industry but because spent fuel is the repository of most of the worid s plutonium, some 1000 tons at present, and is already dispersed among the 30-odd countries in which nuclear power plants are located. The indefinite accumulation of these dispersed inventories has proliferation implications that are at least comparable in their gravity to the surplus weapons plutonium inventories in Russia... 

Fault trees originated in the aerospace industry and have been used extensively by the nuclear power industry to qualify and quantify the hazards and risks associated with nuclear power plants. This approach is becoming more popular in the chemical process industries, mostly as a result of the successful experiences demonstrated by the nuclear industry. 

Island/Thurrock Area, HMSO, London, 1978. Rasmussen, Reactor Safety Study An Assessment of Accident Risk in U. S. Commercial Nuclear Power Plants, WASH-1400 NUREG 75/014, Washington, D.C., 1975. Rijnmond Public Authority, A Risk Analysis of 6 Potentially Hazardous Industrial Objects in the Rijnmond Area—A Pilot Study, D. Reidel, Boston, 1982. Considine, The Assessment of Individual and Societal Risks, SRD Report R-310, Safety and Reliability Directorate, UKAEA, Warrington, 1984. Baybutt, Uncertainty in Risk Analysis, Conference on Mathematics in Major Accident Risk Assessment, University of Oxford, U.K., 1986. 

The other types of radioactive materials cited in this section (medical industry and food industry sources) produce significantly lower activity levels than fuel from a nuclear power plant. However, these sources of radioactive materials may be appealing to terrorists because they are far more accessible. Thousands of hospitals, medical treatment facilities, and food industry plants scattered across the U.S. are protected by relatively low levels of security. 

On March 28, 1979, a loss of containment incident occurred at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. An overheated reactor released radioactive steam and water to the atmosphere resulting in a mass evacuation of the surrounding community. Although no direct injuries were attributed to the incident, environmental effects were later observed and public outcry resulted in a slowdown in the growth of the nuclear power industry. 

The volume of nuclear wastes produced is relatively small compared with the volume of municipal solid wastes and industrial wastes and is very much less than that of agricultural and mining wastes. Each year, for example, the 104 nuclear power plants now operating in the United States generate a total of about 30,000 short tons (27,000 metric tons) of nuclear waste. That volume is about 0.001 percent the amount of hazardous wastes produced every year. In the five decades that nuclear power plants have been operating in the United States, a total of about 9,000 short tons (8,200 metric... 

The world use of nuclear power to supply a nation s electricity varies widely by country. France, for example, gets around 75% of its electricity from nuclear power, and several other European countries get over half of their energy from this source. Approximately 20% of the electricity in the United States comes from 103 operating nuclear power plants. Nuclear is second only to coal, 50%, and ahead of natural gas, 15%, hydropower, 8%, and oil, 3%, as a source of electrical energy. Although once hailed by President Eisenhower in the 1950s as a safe, clean, and economical source of power, the US. nuclear industry has fallen on hard times in the last twenty-five years. Nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania,... 

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