nuke tech essays

nuke tech essays Today in our energy hungry world, the reliance on nuclear power is getting larger and larger. Nuclear power is on top of the list of forms of power available to generate electricity in the quantities, forms and reliability needed as we head towards the 21st century. Current operating nuclear plants number approximately Nuclear energy production will grow an average of 3.3 to 4.2% Per Year worldwide from 1988-2005 (IAEA News briefs, Sept.1989). Though we have experienced if not the worst techno genic environmental disaster of the 20th century fourteen years ago - Chernobyl, together with the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island twenty-one years ago, most people today give only passing thoughts to the issue of nuclear safety worldwide. These two cases are only mere examples of the ominous potential for accidents of great magnitude within such nuclear plants worldwide. It is vital that we understand both the logic and outcomes of such disasters. Today fourteen years later, effects of Chernobyl are still hazardous and have been detected all over the world. Belarus, a country most affected by history's worst nuclear disaster does not even have a nuclear plant. The radiation released from Chernobyl was 200 times more than that of the combined releases of the atom bombs that annihilated Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Due to prevailing winds, 25 percent of the land in Belarus is uninhabitable. All normal life has stopped there, people are afraid to move, stay, marry and afraid to have families. The costs of the accidents after-effects are monumental; resettlement of people affected, medical and clean-up costs are just a few on the priority list. The problem lies in ignorance of interactions between human, engineering, organizational and managerial factors of such a system. In most cases human error is customarily cited as a major cause of the problem. Sometimes in my mind I...