World’s top uranium miner votes on returning to nuclear power
Voters in Kazakhstan will decide on Sunday whether to allow construction of a nuclear power plant amid worries over the environmental impact.
Media coverage of the Japanese nuclear power plant that suffered damage after Friday’s earthquake is overblown, according to Dr. Josef Oehmen, a research scientist at MIT. His thoughts were summarized in a blog post that is gaining traction in the twittersphere.
The piece is worth reading in full. Oehem summarizes his thoughts:
Now, where does that leave us?
•The plant is safe now and will stay safe.
•Japan is looking at an INES Level 4 Accident: Nuclear accident with local consequences. That is bad for the company that owns the plant, but not for anyone else.
Some radiation was released when the pressure vessel was vented. All radioactive isotopes from the activated steam have gone (decayed). A very small amount of Cesium was released, as well as Iodine. If you were sitting on top of the plants’ chimney when they were venting, you should probably give up smoking to return to your former life expectancy. The Cesium and Iodine isotopes were carried out to the sea and will never be seen again.
•There was some limited damage to the first containment. That means that some amounts of radioactive Cesium and Iodine will also be released into the cooling water, but no Uranium or other nasty stuff (the Uranium oxide does not “dissolve” in the water). There are facilities for treating the cooling water inside the third containment. The radioactive Cesium and Iodine will be removed there and eventually stored as radioactive waste in terminal storage.
•The seawater used as cooling water will be activated to some degree. Because the control rods are fully inserted, the Uranium chain reaction is not happening. That means the “main” nuclear reaction is not happening, thus not contributing to the activation. The intermediate radioactive materials (Cesium and Iodine) are also almost gone at this stage, because the Uranium decay was stopped a long time ago. This further reduces the activation. The bottom line is that there will be some low level of activation of the seawater, which will also be removed by the treatment facilities.
Michael Allan McCrae wrote this story. You can contact him at [email protected] or@michaelmccrae.
