Nuclear Energy: Chernobyl And Fukushima

The nuclear disaster in Fukushima occurred at fourteen forty six, Japanese time. The disaster occurred because a major magnitude nine earthquake struck North Eastern Japan and a fifteen meter high tsunami also struck the power plant (Grimston). There were eleven overall reactors that were effected by the earthquake and tsunami. Nine of the reactors cooling systems continued to work after the natural disasters occurred, but reactors one, two and three of the Fukushima Daiichi plant were terribly damaged and could not cool down the fission process. This is what lead to the one, two and three reactors to melt, causing the most detrimental damage to the global community (Grimston). Critics of the disasters say that Daiichi was not up to global nuclear safety standards because the wall the protected the plant was only stable against six meter tall tsunami waves, not the massive

When you hear the word “nuclear”, what do you think of? Does the thought scare you, intrigue you, or have no effect at all? Nuclear energy has been a part of our lives for many years. Some events that included nuclear power included the Cold War and the Chernobyl disaster. These events have changed how people view nuclear energy. Nuclear power is used all around the world to create efficient energy, but it can also be used to create weapons and destructive material. Nuclear power has proven to be clean, efficient and cost effect; the Chernobyl disaster revealed to the world why we needed to change training, safety procedure, and the structure of the plant itself.

These accidents were chosen because they constitute worst yet valuable examples of what can – and, occasionally, does – go wrong in the nuclear power production realm, and because they shape our understanding of the caused harm. They also embrace a thirty-five year period, during which nuclear power underwent significant regulatory development worldwide, aiming to address growing concerns with respect to short- and long-term effects of such disasters on human health, environmental, social, and economic factors.

Being a supporter of nuclear power in today’s society could be potentially risky. So conveys author William Tucker who believes there is no other alternative, even after the Fukushima disaster (228). Tucker uses a plethora of examples and statistics to demonstrate how nuclear power could be the best alternative; moreover, he doesn’t specify which energy technology is most dangerous, but states that they all are in different ways. All alternatives have risks that determine how harmful they can be; however, it is up to the people to decide how much they are willing to risk. Progressing on from the risks, Tucker claims that we need nuclear power “if we are going to maintain our standard of living” (228). As others try to disprove this statement,

The public commonly counters nuclear because of the threat of a meltdown; however, meltdowns are rare and extreme circumstances that the nuclear power field is prepared to handle. Chernobyl has become one of the most frequently used arguments against the safety factor of nuclear energy, however there are critical pieces of the puzzle that the public overlooks. The first piece being that the design of the reactor was one-hundred percent of the design was of Soviet origin, which differed greatly from European and American designs (“Chernobyl Accident 1986”). Along with the design, improper training of Soviet personnel and Soviet approved testing directly contributed to the reactor’s failure (“Chernobyl Accident 1986”). One flawed aspect of the testing was that plant personnel where instructed to disable the automatic shutdown features that were in

There have been lots of nuclear accident around the world. One of the accident that had a major impact on the world was the Chernobyl disaster. The disaster took place on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. The disaster was caused by a reaction explosion induced by design faults and staff application errors. The accident took place in the course of scheduled tests to check the power supply mode in the event of external sources loss. Even after 10 days, explosions and ejections of radioactive substances continued. The release of radiation and radioactive substance polluted the places within 30 km of Chernobyl, and those areas have been closed for a long period of

Fukushima catastrophic is a warning to the world about the hazards of nuclear power and contained lessons for the other governments who plan new generation of nuclear power stations. First lesson is the full disclosure on potential risks and share creditable information with the public. Furthermore,

There are currently over 435 commercial nuclear power reactors operable in 31 countries, and about 70 more reactors are under construction. According to World Nuclear Organization, fourteen of them have been classified as accidents where the public has been exposed to large amounts of radiation. The most devastating of these incidents was the core meltdown of reactor 4 at Chernobyl, better known as the Chernobyl disaster. Today, I am going to tell three things about the Chernobyl. First, I am going to tell you what the Chernobyl disaster was. Second, why the explosion happened. Lastly, what the Chernobyl was after the explosion.

The reactor was overheating to the point it was emitting radioactive material. The Tokyo Energy Power Company admitted that they failed to inspect thirty-three cooling system equipment for the six reactors about two weeks before the disaster (NYTimes.com).

Fortunately, alternative energy technologies exist which can completely alleviate this danger. These technologies include solar, wind, and biodiesel sources for clean renewable energy production. Should these technologies be implemented worldwide on an industrial scale, they can protect and sustain a healthy environment by providing an eco-friendly replacement for nuclear power. This paper will provide a chronicle of selected worldwide nuclear incidents in

History of Nuclear Power plants has shown human society that it is unreliable and unpredictable. Behrens and Rosen show the devastation that Chernobyl had on the human population after the large scale meltdown. “Fukushima was the worst nuclear disaster since 1986, when the Chernobyl nuclear power reactor in the Ukraine suffered a meltdown, eventually exposing over half a million cleanup workers to toxic levels of radioactivity and releasing lesser levels of contamination over much of the western USSR and Europe” (Behrens, Rosen 292). Chernobyl is a prime example of nuclear power plant reactions when they have meltdowns and fail. Chernobyl was a severe case but it gives the public a good idea of what happens when these power plants are not properly

Early in the morning of April 27, 1986, the world experienced its largest nuclear disaster ever (Gould 40). While violating safety protocol during a test, Reactor 4 at the Chernobyl power plant was placed in a severely unstable state, and in a matter of seconds the reactor output shot up to 120 times the rated output (Flavin 8). The resulting steam explosion tossed aside the reactor’s 1,000 ton concrete covering and released radioactive particles up to one and a half miles into the sky (Gould 38). The explosion and resulting fires caused 31 immediate deaths and over a thousand injuries, including radiation poisoning (Flavin 5). After the

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

On March 11th, 2011, the northern section of Japan was hit by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake, followed by a 15 meter tsunami, causing the death of over 15000 people. (Spacey) Even though the earthquake and the tsunami caused a tremendous amount of deaths in the northern region of Japan, the meltdown of the Fukushima nuclear power plant caused a severe damage to northern Japan’s ecosystem that people still cannot go back to their homes; despite it is 4 years after the disaster. After the earthquake, the tsunami destroyed the power supply used by Fukushima’s three nuclear power stations, causing severe levels of meltdown to be occurred inside the reactors in the timespan of 3 days. It was not until 2 weeks after the tragedy, when the reactors were finally stabilized, and took several months to approach what is called a “cold shutdown condition”, in which the fission in the reactors are completely stopped.(Fukushima A)

In 1950, the first commercial nuclear power plants were constructed. The public was promised a non-polluting and resourceful type of energy, but how safe was, and is, nuclear energy? Although there are less than 500 licensed nuclear power plants in the world, many nuclear accidents have already been endangering civilian lives. More serious accidents are not just likely, but inevitable (Fairchild 29). Nuclear energy may appear to be the ideal source of energy for the future: however, there are many negative effects of nuclear energy that can lead to very dangerous situations.