Overview of Nuclear Processes and Safety Issues
As of 2011, nuclear safety considerations occur in a number of situations, including:
-
- Nuclear fission power used in nuclear power stations, and nuclear submarines and ships
- Nuclear weapons
- Fissionable fuels such as uranium and plutonium and their extraction, storage and use
- Radioactive materials used for medical, diagnostic, batteries for some space projects, and research purposes
- Nuclear waste, the radioactive waste residue of nuclear materials
- Nuclear fusion power, a technology under long-term development
- Unplanned entry of nuclear materials into the biosphere and food chain (living plants, animals and humans) if breathed or ingested.
With the exception of thermonuclear weapons and experimental fusion research, all safety issues specific to nuclear power stems from two issues - the toxicity and radioactivity of heavy fissionable materials, waste byproducts, and other radioactive materials, and the risks of unplanned or uncontrolled nuclear accidents.
Nuclear safety therefore covers at minimum: -
-
- Extraction, transportation, storage, processing, and disposal of fissionable materials
- Safety of nuclear power generators
- Control and safe management of nuclear weapons, nuclear material capable of use as a weapon, and other radioactive materials
- Safe handling, accountability and use in industrial, medical and research contexts
- Disposal of nuclear waste
- Limitations on exposure to radiation
Read more about this topic: Nuclear Safety
Famous quotes containing the words nuclear, processes, safety and/or issues:
“American universities are organized on the principle of the nuclear rather than the extended family. Graduate students are grimly trained to be technicians rather than connoisseurs. The old German style of universal scholarship has gone.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“All the followers of science are fully persuaded that the processes of investigation, if only pushed far enough, will give one certain solution to each question to which they can be applied.... This great law is embodied in the conception of truth and reality. The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“There is always safety in valor.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Your toddler will be “good” if he feels like doing what you happen to want him to do and does not happen to feel like doing anything you would dislike. With a little cleverness you can organize life as a whole, and issues in particular, so that you both want the same thing most of the time.”
—Penelope Leach (20th century)