Overview of Nuclear Processes and Safety Issues
As of 2011, nuclear safety considerations occur in a number of situations, including:
-
- Nuclear fission power used in nuclear power stations, and nuclear submarines and ships
- Nuclear weapons
- Fissionable fuels such as uranium and plutonium and their extraction, storage and use
- Radioactive materials used for medical, diagnostic, batteries for some space projects, and research purposes
- Nuclear waste, the radioactive waste residue of nuclear materials
- Nuclear fusion power, a technology under long-term development
- Unplanned entry of nuclear materials into the biosphere and food chain (living plants, animals and humans) if breathed or ingested.
With the exception of thermonuclear weapons and experimental fusion research, all safety issues specific to nuclear power stems from two issues - the toxicity and radioactivity of heavy fissionable materials, waste byproducts, and other radioactive materials, and the risks of unplanned or uncontrolled nuclear accidents.
Nuclear safety therefore covers at minimum: -
-
- Extraction, transportation, storage, processing, and disposal of fissionable materials
- Safety of nuclear power generators
- Control and safe management of nuclear weapons, nuclear material capable of use as a weapon, and other radioactive materials
- Safe handling, accountability and use in industrial, medical and research contexts
- Disposal of nuclear waste
- Limitations on exposure to radiation
Read more about this topic: Nuclear Safety
Famous quotes containing the words nuclear, processes, safety and/or issues:
“The problems of the world, AIDS, cancer, nuclear war, pollution, are, finally, no more solvable than the problem of a tree which has borne fruit: the apples are overripe and they are falling—what can be done?... Nothing can be done, and nothing needs to be done. Something is being done—the organism is preparing to rest.”
—David Mamet (b. 1947)
“The higher processes are all processes of simplification. The novelist must learn to write, and then he must unlearn it; just as the modern painter learns to draw, and then learns when utterly to disregard his accomplishment, when to subordinate it to a higher and truer effect.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“Perhaps having built a barricade when you’re sixteen provides you with a sort of safety rail. If you’ve once taken part in building one, even inadvertently, doesn’t its usually latent image reappear like a warning signal whenever you’re tempted to join the police, or support any manifestation of Law and Order?”
—Jean Genet (1910–1986)
“How to attain sufficient clarity of thought to meet the terrifying issues now facing us, before it is too late, is ... important. Of one thing I feel reasonably sure: we can’t stop to discuss whether the table has or hasn’t legs when the house is burning down over our heads. Nor do the classics per se seem to furnish the kind of education which fits people to cope with a fast-changing civilization.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)