Nuclear Disaster Essay

It’s March 11, 2011; a 49 foot tall tsunami has just pummeled the coastline of Japan. The wave has swept into the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Facility and destroyed all the diesel generators; the facility has no way to power the pumps that cool the reactors - a station-wide blackout has occurred. The reactors in buildings 1, 2, and 3 have melted down; the fuel inside them has reached 2700 degrees centigrade - nearly as hot as the surface of the sun. Explosions inside the reactor building begin to occur; the media is calling it the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl - a nuclear holocaust. What is the death toll of this earth shattering disaster? A hundred? A thousand? A million? Try zero. (“Fukushima Daiichi nuclear...” Wikipedia) The concept for nuclear power was first conceived in 1934 with the discovery of induced radioactivity by Frederic and Irene Curie. The United States invested heavily in the research of atomic power during WWII in the search of the atom bomb. After the war, they refocused their research to include nuclear energy, producing the first nuclear reactor in 1951(“Nuclear Power” Wikipedia). Most nuclear reactors are fueled with Uranium-238; this isotope of uranium consists of only 0.7% of naturally occurring uranium. Once inside the reactor, the fuel is bombarded by neutrons. Neutrons strike the nuclei of the uranium atoms, splitting them in two and releasing an enormous amount of heat energy as well as another neutron. This neutron strikes another uranium atom creating a self-sustaining nuclear reaction. This reaction can be controlled by the manipulation of control rods that absorb emitted neutrons. The heat energy produced by the reaction converts water into steam which in turn spins a tu...

... middle of paper ...

...(“Safety of Nuclear...” World Nuclear Association ). The amount of radiation released by the plant into the water in a day is less than a person would receive from eating a banana (Stone). What most people don’t know is how dangerous the burning of fossil fuels is. Every year, around 4 million people die due pneumonia, stroke, and cardiac arrest caused by the toxic fumes emitted by burning coal and other fuels (Powers). The ash released by coal plants actually contains more radiation than nuclear plants emit (Stone). Nuclear power is relatively safe even in the event of disasters or accidents. By law, nuclear power plants must be equipped to handle a 1 in 10,000 year disaster. This means that it should be able to handle the worst disaster of its type in 10,000 years. Nuclear disasters occur because of one thing, the lack of adequate cooling.