Nuclear industry safety

Scientists, critical of the nuclear industries safety record, say that the seals have been faiUng in nuclear plants hundreds of times during the last decade. As yet none of the failures has caused any very serious accidents, but accidents could well be worsened by an O ring failure. 

In addition to meeting the radiation protection requirements for plant operations and keeping the radiation doses ALARA, the design shall also meet the applicable regulatory requirements for non-nuclear industrial safety. 

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. 

General In comparison with design information on blowdown drums and cyclone separators, there is very httle information in the open technical hterature on the design of quench tanks in the Chernies industry. What is available deSs with the design of quench tanks (Sso called suppression pools) for condensation of steam or steam-water mixtures from nuclear reactor safety vSves. Information and criteria from quench tanks in the nuclear industry can be used for the design of quench tanks in the chemicS industry. There have been sev-... 

Probabilistic Safety Assessment in the Chemical and Nuclear Industries... 

In 1976 the Swedish government stipulated that no new nuclear reactors should be charged until it had been shown how the radioactive waste products could be taken care of in an "absolutely safe manner" (8). Consequently, the nuclear power industry (through their joint Nuclear Fuel Supply Co, SKBF) embarked on a program referred to as the Nuclear Fuel Safety (KBS) Project (8). In one of the schemes (9) a repository for spent nuclear fuel elements in envisaged at a depth of 500 m in granitic bedrock. The repository will ultimately contain 6000 tonnes of uranium and 45 tonnes of plutonium. The spent fuel elements will be stored in copper cylinders (0.8 m in diameter and 4.7 m in length) with a wall thickness of 200 mm the void will be filled with lead. 

This approach is expensive. It is attractive for particularly complex products which cannot be tested in real service conditions, and for those where the consequences of malfunction justify the costs of testing. It applies particularly to safety-critical products in the nuclear industry which could be subjected to abnormally harsh conditions, either for the environmental exposure or the end assessment or both. 

It was never even made clear to the public who the combatants were. The battle was not billed as scientifically illiterate political activists attacking the community of nuclear scientists, which was the true situation. Rather, it was represented as environmentalists —what a good, sweet, and pure connotation that name carried—attacking big business interests (the nuclear industry), who were willing to sacrifice the public s health and safety in their quest for profit. Jane Fonda, a prominent actress recruited for the antinuclear army, refused to debate with nuclear scientists. Her antagonists, she said, were the corporation executives. 

The coordination chemistry and distribution of plutonium in the body is similar to that of iron and desferrioxamine can mobilize 239Pu from most of the organs. This fact makes the drug important for safety in the nuclear industry. 

Although the PUREX process is regarded as a well-matured chemical technology in the nuclear industry, owing to its complex chemistry, high radiation field, evolution of the fuels to be processed (i.e., extended high burn-up and MOX fuel), safety and economical issues, and its principal position in establishing the nuclear fuel cycle, both fundamental and application studies have been continued. 

In the past ten years the number of chemistry-related research problems in the nuclear industry has increased dramatically. Many of these are related to surface or interfacial chemistry. Some applications are reviewed in the areas of waste management, activity transport in coolants, fuel fabrication, component development, reactor safety studies, and fuel reprocessing. Three recent studies in surface analysis are discussed in further detail in this paper. The first concerns the initial corrosion mechanisms of borosilicate glass used in high level waste encapsulation. The second deals with the effects of residual chloride contamination on nuclear reactor contaminants. Finally, some surface studies of the high temperature oxidation of Alloys 600 and 800 are outlined such characterizations are part of the effort to develop more protective surface films for nuclear reactor applications. ... 

Fullwood, Ralph R. (2000), Probabilistic Safety Assessment in the Chemical and Nuclear Industries, Butterworth Heinemann, New York, USA. 

The safety record of the nuclear industry has continued to be generally very good, despite the 1987 accident with a nuclear reactor at Chernobyl, in Ukraine, which killed a number of workers, caused the abandonment... 

Safety first has always been and continues to be the basic policy of the nuclear industry. This includes reactor safety by design as well as activities to discourage the proliferation of nuclear weapons and to prevent sabotage of nuclear facilities. This policy has been successful the chance of death from a nuclear accident is over a million times less than death... 

Current known, recoverable world resources of uranium are approximately 3.1 million tons, estimated to be sufficient for about 50 years at current levels of consumption. A doubling of price from present levels is projected to create a 10-fold increase in these resources. Moving from current nuclear power technology to breeder reactors is estimated to increase uranium utilization another 60-fold (World Nuclear Association, 2002). Breeder reactors, however, would aggravate some of the issues now associated with the nuclear industry, including those surrounding safety and nuclear proliferation, while possibly reducing the waste disposal problem. 

Analysis of risks and accounting of safety factor were done under the conservative approach typical of nuclear industry facilities. 

The iiiediods used in system safety engineering are among die most effective tmd advanced mediods to prevent Stem failures that result in accidents. Aldiough system safety engineering is a relatively new Held, it lias been used extensively by the military and die aerospace and nuclear industries to improve the safety of higlily complex systems, lliis approach is based on die concept diat ... 

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