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Fission DangerousFission Tech is dangerous – laundry list of reasons Dutta 11 - the People’s Tribunal on Nuclear energy. (5/19/2011, Soumya, “Why Nuclear (Fission) power must be abandoned forthwith” http://www.dianuke.org/why-nuclear-fission-power-must-be-abandoned-forthwith/,bs) 1. Out of all the electricty (power, in common usage) generation processes that we use, only two have the potential for Catastrophic Failure – big-dam based hydro-power, and nuclear fission based power. No other power generation (to be scientifically correct – we do not generate power, only convert one form of energy to another, more useful form) method has this extreme disaster like danger. If a big dam fails catastrophically, many down-stream towns & villages might be severely damaged, BUT the reconstruction can start in a day from the disaster. In case of a nuclear reactor catastrophe, the impacts on human fatality, health etc can be far greater, and a large area around this disaster zone will become unusable for us humans – for centuries or even millenia, due to the radioactive contamination. Living (or rather – dead) example is the once-bustling Pipriyat town in today’s Ukraine – which was home to over 50,000 people till April 25-1986, today standing as a ghost town – some 11 KMs from the exploded Chernobyl reactor. High energy means increased chance of accidents Dutta 11 - the People’s Tribunal on Nuclear energy. (5/19/2011, Soumya, “Why Nuclear (Fission) power must be abandoned forthwith” http://www.dianuke.org/why-nuclear-fission-power-must-be-abandoned-forthwith/,bs) 2. Huge Stored Energy within – Nuclear fission reactors have a very risky feature – unlike most other power plants. The entire fuel /energy source for a large nuclear fission reactor – for upto an entire year, is always present within the small confines of the reactor vessel. This is again somewhat similar to big-dam based hydro power, but here the potential energy of the stored water at any point of time is comparatively smaller – only enough to generate power for some weeks at most. So any possible sudden release accident cant be as destructive as in a nuclear fission reactor. And with today’s reactors getting past the 1000 MWe mark, the amount of stored energy and its destructive potential can hardly be imagined. Consider the proposed EPRs for the Jiatapur NPP. Each reactor is supposed to be of 1650 MWe, and thus will generate nearly 4,800 MW of heat energy at full power opertion. To put it into perspective – all of Delhi’s high consuming 1.8 Crore people, their homes, offices, malls, factories, stadia, metro rail, other rails …. consume around 4,500 MW at the peak demand time. Consider all of Delhi’s peak power electricty consumption being put into enormous heaters and channeled into a small building that is one Jaitapur reactor ! With that kind of energy contained within a small building, catastrophic accidents can’t be ruled out. Fission controls are vulnerable Dutta 11 - the People’s Tribunal on Nuclear energy. (5/19/2011, Soumya, “Why Nuclear (Fission) power must be abandoned forthwith” http://www.dianuke.org/why-nuclear-fission-power-must-be-abandoned-forthwith/,bs) 3. Active controls of reactor safety systems are always vulnerable – Referring to the recent devastating accidents at Fukushima Daiichi, or even the earlier Chernobyl, it is clear that the claims of “automatic shutdown” is only partly true. The neutron absorbing (control) rods came down to reduce the fission chain reaction sharply, BUT the huge amounts of radioactive fission products & trans-uranics (also the Uranium present within – by natural radio-active decay) continued to generate huge amounts of heat. In reality, there is no known & proven wayto turn off this huge heat production within a nuclear fission reactor, even after a reactor shutdown. That is why nuclear fission reactors need to be intensively cooled even long after shut-down. This cooling, and even the sensors giving various readings about the status of the reactor – all need the supply of energy in a sustained & reliable way. If that fails, all the safety systems are likely to fail – as happenned in Fukushima. Even otherwise, the presence of such huge energy and very high levels of strong ionising radiation has the potential to trigger failure of the electronic sensors at any point of time – though not frequent. Fission Kills EnviroFission releases radioactive byproducts Dutta 11 - the People’s Tribunal on Nuclear energy. (5/19/2011, Soumya, “Why Nuclear (Fission) power must be abandoned forthwith” http://www.dianuke.org/why-nuclear-fission-power-must-be-abandoned-forthwith/,bs) 4. Release of powerful radioactive materials in large quantities – At every stage of (a) the nuclear fuel cycle, including the (b) reactor operation, there are large releases of radio-active materials which cause cancers, birth defects, and other cell damages, not only for humans exposed to this radiation, but also for other animals. The main nuclear-fuel in most conventional reactors is Uranium235 (some use Uranium-Plutonium mixed oxide fuel), and the natural decay (through radioactive emission) product is Radon, which is a highly radioactive inert gas. This will be released in large quantities from the tens of thousands of tons of mine-tailings, from fuel fabrication, and even when the nuclear reactor is operating “normally” ie, even without any accident. Even when it is not operating. Amongst the fission-products , several are highly radioactive gases like Iodine-131, Cesium-134, Cesium-137 etc, with half-lifes of days to 30 years. In fact, nuclear reactors regularly vent built-up radioactive gases into the atmosphere, and this will cause high radiation exposure to the population in a fairly large surrounding area, on animals, on plants. Some will get inhaled and cause stronger cell damage inside the human body, causing cancers, abnormal mutation etc. The long life of elements make the environment toxic for thousands of years Dutta 11 - the People’s Tribunal on Nuclear energy. (5/19/2011, Soumya, “Why Nuclear (Fission) power must be abandoned forthwith” http://www.dianuke.org/why-nuclear-fission-power-must-be-abandoned-forthwith/,bs) 5. The problem of long-lasting radioactive waste - A very large part (99% ) of the Uranium used as fuel is the non-fuel Uranium 238, which absorbs neutrons inside the reactor-in-operation to become Plutonium 239. This is highly radioactive and will remain extremely hazardous for tens of thousands of years (with a ‘half-life’ of ~24,200 years), and thus needs to be fully isolated from the environment for ~2,42,000 Years, as ten half-lives are considered necessary for any radiaoactive mass to be considered ‘safe’ !! Human ‘civilisation’ is less than 5,000 years old, and we are already creating large amounts of highly radioactive material for the next quarter million years, poisoning the future of the next 10,000 generations !! There are other such ‘trans-uranic’ elements, radioactive themselves, that also needs to be kept isolated. Apart from this, the mined overburden & tailings – which are dumped around near human habitations – also contains U238, which is also radioactive (though at a lower level), and will remain so for billions of years (with a half life of over 4.5 billion years, about the age of the Earth itself) ! This will also keep generating the radioactive gas radon – again for billions of years, right around us, killing & maiming slowly. Directory: files files -> Answer True False 2 points Question 2 files -> Integer programming and game theory files -> 4 Integer Programming files -> Bpa vehicle Window Repair Scenario #1 task: Procure vehicle window relacement. 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