Energy as a Very Vital Component of Human Progress - Term Paper Example

THE RISK OF ACCIDENTS: ENERGY INDUSTRY (CHERNOBYL) May, 2010 BRAINSTORMING The group assembled to brainstorm on the theme of the report. Then members agreed to pick one of the group members to lead the brainstorming session. The person picked was the favorite of all the members and was a person every group member felt free to interact with. First the members brought up a good brainstorming mood by starting with a session of jokes where members had five minutes to share jokes. Then the leader was given the chance to state the theme of brainstorming which was safety and importance of plant maintenance in the reducing of risk/hazards to workforce, general public and the environment. The members were then told to start thinking about the theme and to contribute their ideas. The group leader gave a chance to everybody to give their contribution freely. The following ideas came out of the brainstorm Evaluation of safety in petroleum refining industries Coal mining and utilization and their effect on environment The performance of bio-fuel in different parts of the world Nuclear energy performance as a source of power. Considering time, the group leader directed that one of the broad topics to be brainstormed about. The nuclear energy was settled upon and members were given chance to suggest what to study on nuclear energy. The following came out of this brain storming session Nuclear plants performance in the world Nuclear energy generation in Europe Performance of the biggest nuclear energy plant in the world Accidents in Nuclear energy -(CHERNOBYL) The group leaders asked the members to pick the topic which they felt they should research upon and all agreed on the Chernobyl case NUCLEAR ENERGY Introduction Energy is a very vital component in the sustaining of human progress. This is because, for any development to occur in a country there need to be enough supply of energy. Further more the level of development can be estimated by simply considering the per car pita energy consumption of the country. A substantial amount of energy consumed worldwide is obtained through the combustion of coal, oil and natural gas (McCarthy,2010) . These sources of energy are non renewable and it is predicted that they can run out of supply or their continued use may be harmful to the environment to the extent that their use may be abolished. The other supply of energy is hydropower and solar energy which are both classified as being renewable energy. The most important aspect that should be put into consideration when it comes to power supply is the cost of the power and the effect of the power to the environment. When this two factors are put into consideration nuclear energy scores very high as compared to other sources of energy as it does not emit gases like carbon dioxide to the environment during its production apart from being the cheapest source of energy. Nuclear Energy As much as nuclear energy is seen to be a clean and cheap source of energy venturing into production of nuclear energy as a source of power supply is not easy as there are many regulations in the production of nuclear energy. This is because of the close association of nuclear energy with nuclear bombs and this brings a lot of politics in production of nuclear energy. Despite all the politics nuclear energy is becoming a common source of energy in many countries. There are regulatory bodies which monitor the nuclear energy industry for example Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the USA which is charged with the responsibility of licensing the construction of nuclear plants and their operation. In USA 20% of the electricity consumed is nuclear with a total of 104 registered nuclear plants in operation in 2007(McCarthy,2010). Nuclear energy is produced in power plants through the process of fission which involves the splitting apart of nucleus of radioactive materials. This results in production of a large amount of energy. The common material used in nuclear plants is Uranium which is takes the role of fuel the nuclear plants (McCarthy, 2010). The point of the nuclear plant where the fission takes place is called the power reactor where we have a core that has numerous fuel rods. The rods contain uranium oxide pellets. There is fission whenever a neutron is absorbed by a uranium atom (U-235). In the process of fission products particles come out at a very high speed and when stopped, the result is the production of a lot of heat which is about 10million times the heat that is usually produced in normal combustion of a carbon atom in air. The heat produced from the rods is used to heat water which in turn is used to drive turbines and thus in the process electricity is generated. It should be noted that because of the excessive heat production in the power plant during the reaction a lot of caution should be taken in controlling the reaction process. Any uncontrolled fission would turn a nuclear plant into a nuclear bomb thus what was supposed to be of benefit would end up being a disaster. Nuclear energy is also associated with radioactive emissions which are very harmful to all living things and therefore any venture into production of nuclear energy should also that precaution are taken to ensure that radiations are not released into the environment. Chernobyl Disaster It can be seen that production of nuclear power is a delicate issue as failing to observe any rule can be very disastrous. A typical case of nuclear power accident was the case of nuclear power accident that occurred in Chernobyl, Ukraine 1986. A lot of investigation has been done to find out exactly what caused this accident and the findings have been that the plant had some design faults and also the operators of the plant partly were responsible for the occurrence of the accident because there being no safety culture in the power plant Fig.1 Chernobyl Location Source: OECD NEA The reactor crew in the power plant decided to undertake some test to determine the cause of failure to produce the required power. On the process of testing several actions were performed which included disabling the shutdown system which was initially automatic, and when an attempt was made to shut down the reactor it was too late as it was already in unstable condition. This is a clear manifestation that the problem was caused by the operators not understanding the consequences of their actions. The design of the plant can be seen also to have some flaws. This is because of the fact that in case there is any appreciable damage to say three or four of the fuel assembly this automatically leads to the reactor being destroyed. Such faults could have been avoided by a plant manager who should be having a clear knowledge of the design and the proper operation of the plant. The management should also be concerned of every activity that takes place in the plant and approve it after consultation with relevant personnel. This seems not to have been the case as the operators seem to have embarked on the repair activities without any clear confirmation from the management. Fig. 2 Diagrammatic representation Chernobyl Nuclear reactor Source: OECD NEA Radiation measurement and Exposure There are different units which are used to measure radiation. It is important to be conversant with the units so as to understand the level of damage that was caused by the accident in terms of radiation level being increased in the environment. The radiation levels are usually displayed on an LCD machine in the conventional units of mR∕hr or µR∕hr while the SI is mSv ∕hr or µSv∕hr. Where R stands for Roentgen, Sv stands for Sirvert while the symbols m and µ retain their usual meanings of mini and micro respectively. The following are the relationship that exist between the two quantities 1 Sv = 100 R 1 mSv = 100 mR The other units used in measuring the radiation are the RAD (radiation absorbed dose) and REM (Reontgen Equivalent Man) The rad is an expression of the absorption of all type of radiation into any medium where and absorption of 100 args of energy per gram while the rem is a measure which correlates the dose of any radiation to the biological effect of the radiation. In a normal environment there is some natural radiation of about 2.5mSv∕yr. due to the presence of radioactive material that occurs naturally. When compared to a radiation of 0.5mSv∕hr the former is very weak. This is because to get the total exposure per year the value 0.5 is supposed to be multiplied by the total number of hours in a year. Thus 0.5mSv∕hr translates to 0.5×24×365= 4380 mSv∕yr. which is more than 1000 times the value 2.5mSv∕yr When the Chernobyl accident occurred there was an estimate of all the Xeno, half iodine and cesium and about 5% of the radioactive materials in the reactor were released World (Nuclear Association, 2009). Most of the materials which were heavy were deposited around the plant but the lighter materials were transported spreading over Ukraine and spilling over to Belarus, Russia and also to an extent over to Scandinavia and Europe. Fig. 3 Diagram of a nuclear reactor with a confinement structure After the accident a chain of activities took place which had different consequences. The fire fighters came in to put out the fire which they managed to put out in a few hours. Because of the exposure to very strong radiation which in the first were reported to have been as high as 20,000mSv 28 deaths were reported (World Nuclear Association, 2009). The next activity was cleaning up radioactivity from the accident site so that the damaged reactor could completely be shielded while the other three remaining reactors could resume operation. The cleaning exercise involved 200,000 who came from all over Soviet Union. These were also exposed to high radiation averaging 100 mSv while about 20,000 received a higher radiation of 250 mSv. This high exposure could have not happened if the factory management took the right steps. The fire fighters the liquidators or anybody else for that matter should have not been allowed to move to the site of the accident unless they were sure the person had protective gear that would have protected them from the radioactive. There was also a lot of evacuation after the accident. Some 45000 people who were less than 10km from the accident site were evacuated from 2-3 May 1986 several days after the occurrence of the accident. On the 4 May there was a farther evacuation of 116,000 people who were within 30km from the accident scene, 1000 of which have returned home unofficially to live within the contaminated zone. After a year the area for evacuation was increased from 2800 km2 (the area that was within 30km from accident scene) to 4300 km2 and this resulted into 210,000 people being evacuated (World Nuclear Association, 2009). This evacuation was not necessary as in most of the areas apart from those which were only a half a km a way from the scene of accident, a radiation of just 50% above the normal background radiation of 2.5 mSv/yr was recorded. This just reveals that there was a lot of confusion after the accident. Lack of knowledge about radiation could have also lead to such unnecessary evacuation being done. It is hard to imagine a situation where 200,000 people moved away from safe places to come and expose themselves to radiation of as high as 250mSv while a lot of expenses were incurred to move people away from their own home just because of radiation which was just slightly above background radiation! The other problem was the location of the nuclear plant. From the evacuation which was done it is seen that the plant was very close to human settlement. The dangers of nuclear plant should overrule any possibility of it being located any place that is close to human population. The location of nuclear plants should be in remote areas where losses of human life and that of other living organisms will be minimized just incase an accident occurs. It is noted that no information which could be reliable was given even after two years after occurrence of the accident. The end result of this was distrust coupled with confusion about the health effects which could be brought about due to exposure to the radiation. Environmental and Health concerns Since the time of occurrence of accident research has been done to establish the environmental and health effects which could have been caused by the accident. The organizations that tried reporting on the matter found it difficulty to do so because of the lack of information on the public health issues before the year of the accident occurrence. In 1989 the World Health Organization was not satisfied by some of the biological and health effects being attributed to exposure to radiation. It was due to this that the government of USSR put a request to Atomic Energy Agency IAEA to take the responsibility of the coordination of the international expert who were performing the assessment of the radiological, environmental and health problems caused by the accident in some selected town in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus (World Nuclear Association,2009). Due to lack of pre 1986 data a control population was used in comparison to those who had been exposed to radiation. There was evidently recording of a lot of health disorders in both the populations but none of them was related to radiation. But subsequent studies done in the same countries indicated that there was an increase in the detection of thyroid cancer in the children who had been exposed to the radiation, even though some of them were suspected to be artifacts of the screening process. Chernobyl after the Accident Since there were three reactors that remained after the 1986 incident coupled with the high demand for energy, operations at Chernobyl did not stop. There has been safety precaution being taken for example relocating people who initially lived only 3km from the plant to a new town 30km from the plant. Apart from people being moved away from the plant a new confinement structure has been proposed to be built that is expected to end by the year 2011 (World Nuclear Association,2009). The dimension of the structure will be such that it will be able to enclose all the reactors at the site. The money to be used in the construction of the structure will be from the Chernobyl Shelter Fund. There was also a contract which was signed in 1999 which involved the construction of a waste management system. The waste system was expected to have a storage capacity of storing 25000 assemblies of used fuel from the existing three reactor units and also would take care of other waste produced at the site (World Nuclear Association, 2009). The waste system was also supposed to take care of all the decommissioning materials that would come from the three units. This contract was however cancelled after technicalities emerged in its implementation. An interim spent fuel storage facility is expected to be constructed by other contractors and it should be complete by mid 2013. Another notable event that has taken place is the handing over of the a turnkey waste treatment centre which is specifically designed to handle the solid radioactive waste Plate 1: Nuclear power station in remote area: The reactor is in a confinement structure Source: Google images Challenges and Difficulties of the project. The major challenges is to exhaust the issues of the accident that are covered in the report during the discussion Sometimes discussing scientific concept does not excite people and thus loosing audience is easy The discussion might require facilities like projectors which might not be present Incase other group members did not do the research it will be difficult to have any meaningful discussion Discussion/Conclusion From the incident of Chernobyl several lessons have been learnt. One of the lessons being that the safety of a reactor is very important. The investigations which have been done indicate that the operators made a chain of mistakes that led to the accident. The operators were reported to have deliberately withdrawn most of the control and safety rods which was a dire violation of the rules. This is an indication of lack of competence in the operators. There is need for the management to ensure that all the people in charge of operation of such dangerous facilities are highly trained and dedicated to their work. The chain of mistakes which were made even after the disaster had happened is also an indication that there was little knowledge about the dangers of radiations. There is also a chance that there is poor coordination in Government institutions with the result that the right information did not reach the right place at the right time. The need for research and dissemination of the findings is also important in reducing such faults. One may be tempted to question the recruitment process that was used to higher the operators. Were there no more qualified people who could be given the responsibility of running the nuclear plant? The radiation that came from the accident scene were not confined to the country of origin and this just points out the need of having cross boundary policies as a mistake made in one country can affect other countries. Design in adequacy of the nuclear reactor has also come out very prominently. To ensure that the best equipment is put into operation there should be international organizations that satisfy the installation of nuclear and other equipment that might cause a great danger to humanity. Such organizations need to be recognized world wide for them to be effective. There is a need of having a confinement structure that will ensure that even when the reactor no radiations are spilt to the environment. A good example being the Three Mile Island accident where the reactor was completely destroyed but there was no death occurring or radiations spilling in the surrounding areas. From the accounts of the activities that have preceded the chernobyl accident; it is hoped that a lot has been learnt and that no a similar accident will not occur again. References World Nuclear Association, (2009) Chernobyl Accident Retrieved on 9 May, 2010 From McCarthy J.(2010)Frequently Asked Questions about Nuclear Energy Retrieved on 9 May, 2010 From , UNSCEAR,( 2000)Exposures and Effects of the Chernobyl Accident, Annex J of Sources and Effects of Ionizing Radiation, UNSCEAR 2000 Report to the General Assembly Vol. II Retrieved on 9 May, 2010 From International Atomic Energy Agency. (1996)Ten Years after Chernobyl: what do we really know? (based on the proceedings of the IAEA/WHO/EC International Conference, Vienna, April 1996), Retrieved on 9 May, 2010 From OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (2002).Chernobyl: Assessment of Radiological and Health Impacts - 2002 Update of Chernobyl: Ten Years On, Read More