On December 2nd, 1942, the Chicago Pile-1 nuclear reactor was brought online. It was the world’s first, and the beginning of a movement that would come to shape the world’s energy resources for decades to come. Since that day, nuclear power has peaked at ten percent of the world’s total energy resources in 2011 (International Energy Agency), and has fueled not only power grids across the globe, but a heated debate about the viability, environmental impact, and ethical concerns of using nuclear fission and radioactive chemical reactions as a public energy source. The most widespread arguments against its use all revolve around a trio of disastrous reactor failures spanning the last three decades: the meltdown on Three Mile Island, the …show more content…
Barely a year later, on March 28, 1979, the second of the station’s pair of reactors had been shut down for refueling and routine maintenance, during which an attempt to clear a blockage resulting in a clogged instrument line which would lead to a shutdown of several different water and coolant pumps later in the evening. With the steam generators no longer receiving water, the heat and caused the reactor to perform an emergency shutdown. Within eight seconds, control rods were inserted into the core to halt the nuclear chain reaction. Because steam was no longer being fed into the turbine, however, heat was no longer being removed from the reactor. When the water pumps had stopped, three auxiliary pumps activated automatically. Their valves had been closed for routine maintenance, however, leaving them unable to pump any water. Closing all three valves at once was a violation of Nuclear Regulatory Commission policy, and one of the primary causes of the reactor’s partial meltdown (Mahaffey 329). When the auxiliary pumps failed to come online, a relief valve should have opened as a tertiary safety mechanism to release heat and pressure. It was prevented from doing do due to a mechanical fault, but poorly designed instrumentation made this difficult for operators to discover. As a result of improper training and complex instrumentation, it took several hours and a new shift of workers before
The electrical failure caused the operator to not know that the valve was still open, which led to cooling water pouring out of the valve and caused the reactor core to overheat. As a result of all of these things, the instruments that the operators read to know what was happening provided confusing information. The operators could not tell how much coolant was in the reactor core because they didn't
When someone thinks of problems plaguing the world, nuclear energy is not the first thing that comes to peoples minds these days.[1]Nuclear power was once deemed the new energy of the future.[2]However, numerous nuclear power plant accidents around the world put a damper on that notion.The United States considers itself one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world, but 103 nuclear reactors currently operating within her borders, one was bound to fail sometime or another.[3]
Firstly, the atomic incidents of Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania and Chernobyl in Russia are often mentioned as examples for nuclear plants being unsafe. In both cases failures of workers led to a meltdown in the reactors and increased radiation in the surrounding area (Henderson 12-17). And as the recent disaster in Japan shows, a nuclear crisis cannot only be caused by human mishaps, but also by unpredictable and untamable natural hazards. Consequently, nuclear crises cannot be predicted or prevented completely. Nuclear plants are, furthermore, considered uneconomical because in the eighties the construction costs of nuclear plants were underestimated and exceeded the estimation by $100 billion (Henderson 103). Therefore, the nuclear power opponents are arguing that nuclear power is burdening the American economy unnecessarily. According to the nuclear physicist Jeff Eerkens, antinuclear groups are also claiming that nuclear power is not necessary for the future since renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal power will be providing sufficient energy for the United States, and are at the same time much cheaper than the costly nuclear power plants (Eerkens 20). Over all, opponents consider nuclear power to risky and inefficient to “deserve further support from U.S. taxpayers” (Henderson 104).
When people hear the term “nuclear energy”, the first thing that jumps to their minds is most often “danger”. Who could blame the world for their intense fears of nuclear power, especially after reading the reports from Dr. Ira Helfand and the American writer, David Biello? Dr. Helfand’s article, “Radiation’s Risk to Public Health”, attacks the nuclear energy with facts and concerns like those of the National Research Council BEIR VI report. Whereas Dr. Helfand supports his claims with scientific evidence, David Biello only had a script from a discussion that followed the Fukushima crisis. David Biello’s article, “How Safe Are U.S. Nuclear Reactors? Lessons from Fukushima”, he uncovers secret concerns and future plans about the incredibly disastrous incident. Although David Biello used credible sources and attempted to appeal to ethos, logos, and pathos, Dr. Ira Helfand contains an authority in his education and knows a great deal more about nuclear power and definitely has the best representation of ethos, logos, and pathos.
After several weeks of investigating, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission assigned blame to the combination of incompetent employees and a defective and convoluted user interface. The most glaring of these user interface issues was found on the control panel itself. A light on the panel meant to indicate the position of the steam vent's valve was shown to be confirming that the vent was closed, while in truth the vent was open. Many workers were also discovered to have been improperly trained on appropriate procedure and the functions of some indicators, which led to the misreading of many of the plant's implements. NRC inspectors theorized that a nearly inescapable cycle of missteps and errors was set into motion, amplifying the severity of the situation with each passing moment.
The accident began about 4:00 a.m. on March 28, 1979, when there was failure in the secondary, non-nuclear section of the plant. The main feedwater pumps stopped running, which was caused by either a mechanical or electrical failure that prevented the steam generators from removing heat. First the turbine, then the reactor automatically shut down. Then the pressure in the primary
The operator opened the relief valve to release the pressure in which is in the reactor, while the pressure inside the reactor was decreasing up to the required level due to the improper respond and malfunctioning lead to failure of the valve to close. Not only wrong readings by the engineers, but also an inputting excess amount of computer data lead to the technical failure, the slag in the ongoing analyzing process and immediately human alert was alarmed in the power plant. But this issue as not stopped yet, the core of the reactor was beginning to cook. The incident China syndrome was named since there was the increasing of temperature from 4300 degrees Celsius to 5300degree at which meltdown. Hazardous radioactive gas was exposed all over the plant because of the leaked water from the open valve in an adjacent building. No emergency precaution was taken when the second accident of radioactive gas took place. In the video, there was also a communication error to note down and transfer the report were the problems facing the operators to take the decision quickly. Also, one of the employers found the fault in the explosion theory of co-worker prediction the hydrogen bubble was never a threat, it was a human error. Finally, it was the most devastating incident that was spread in the news all over the world and local people
One of the most controversial topics in the field of renewable energy is nuclear energy. In nineteen eighty six, the Chernobyl power plant in modern day Ukraine (formerly the USSR) had a major, level seven meltdown. A level seven nuclear disaster is the highest disaster possible in regards to nuclear event. This meltdown caused billions of tons of radioactive material to fly into the air that spread all across Europe (Xiang, Zhu). The most recent major nuclear accident happened in two thousand eleven, in Fukushima, Japan.
They decided to run hot water directly over top of the section of piping where the blockage was located to try and bring the temperature up to 52°F to melt the methyl mercaptan hydrate. They would use pressure indicators along the piping to identify where the hydrate was as it began to move along the piping. However, when they began this process, they closed a valve that would have allowed methyl mercaptan to flow from the storage tank and into the shutdown reactor unit. Due to this valve being closed, the methyl mercaptan that was being pumped from the storage tank to try and help clear the blockage had only one place to go, and that was into the vent header
* These 2 critical errors (withdrawing the rods and slowing the reaction too rapidly) made the engineers incapable of increasing the power within the reactor.
Steam accumulated inside the reactor was no more utilized by the turbine and there was a spike in temperature of the nucleus of the reactor. Indeed, even the helper pumps were closed down for cleaning and this was the reason as why there was no water in the plant’s reactor. The engineers in the controller room quickly close the auto safety valve, however the administrators didn't understand that the help valve was blocked and it was not shut. They imagined that the core is protected by looking at the marker of emergency assistance valve in the controller room. Here the mishap happens, the administrators by eluding the pointer missed to weigh the genuine issue in the reactor. Because of the opening of emergency assistance valve, the cool water in the reactor spilled out through valve and this heated the plant and made reactor hotter. The water dripped from the open valve spilled into an adjacent building discharging radioactive gasses. Following a few hours' main pumps was worked to put water in the reactor and the reactor started to cool down. Later it came to realize that hydrogen air pockets were shaped on the interior of the plant. If it is exposed to the air, an expansive blast can happen and resulting in many deaths in Three Mile
Nuclear power was the world’s fastest growing form of energy in the 1990’s. However, presently it is the second slowest growing worldwide. Considering that nuclear power accounts for eleven percent of the world’s energy supply, one must ask what happened [Nuclear Power]. Why is it that the growth of nuclear power has almost completely stalled? The simple answer is that after meltdowns such as Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, many people are afraid of nuclear power plants, which causes great opposition to the expansion of the industry. Unfortunately, most people are not well informed about nuclear energy; many do not take the time to view its positives and negatives.
The disaster took place on April 1986, and was caused by inexperienced staff. When the power plant had to undergo a special test, to make sure that sufficient amount of cooling water would be supplied to the reactor in case of a power outage. However, the test had been delayed, because the national grid required the power output more than the expected time. Hence, the test was postponed after midnight where the night shift had to come. The night shift had little experience about such a test as most of them were electrical engineers rather than nuclear. On the other hand, the night shift had to perform the test before the grid needed the power again, otherwise they would have all been fined or fired. Consequently, lead to an unnecessary pressure on the personnel, which in turn increased the probability of making incorrect
The causes of the accident was quite complex. In brief, it began with a closed bypass valve, which stopped the water flowing to the secondary main feed water pumps, once the steam generators could not receive water, they stopped and the reactor emergently shutdown. Control rods were inserted into the
In 1942, Enrico Fermi successfully sustained a nuclear fission reaction and created the world’s first functional reactor. What his experiments, and those of earlier scientists like Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman, showed was that by splitting the nucleus of heavy radioactive elements (like uranium and cadmium), energy is released, and the reaction could be designed to generate a sustained energy source (Schlager & Weisblatt, 2006). Subsequent experiments illuminated the promise of nuclear energy as a reliable alternative to coal, and scientists and economists praised it as the future of energy. While nuclear power remains the most efficient form of energy (Nei.org, 2013), its early proponents failed to take into account the potentially devastating effects of a power plant overloading and exposing radioactive waste to nearby populations, and catastrophic events like the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters have substantially undermined the promise of Nuclear Energy. The question of whether nuclear power will become the standard of energy production remains a hotly debated topic among economists and environmentalists alike. The economic costs of nuclear energy are vast, ranging from government oversights and barriers to entry, to variable human capital costs and fiercely competitive substitutes. By analyzing the economics of the establishment of a nuclear power plant, we can get closer to answering the question of whether nuclear power will become the true future of energy.