Overview of Nuclear Processes and Safety Issues
As of 2011, nuclear safety considerations occur in a number of situations, including:
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- 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: -
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- 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 and/or safety:
“Language is as real, as tangible, in our lives as streets, pipelines, telephone switchboards, microwaves, radioactivity, cloning laboratories, nuclear power stations.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“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)
“A lover is never a completely self-reliant person viewing the world through his own eyes, but a hostage to a certain delusion. He becomes a perjurer, all his thoughts and emotions being directed with reference, not to an accurate and just appraisal of the real world but rather to the safety and exaltation of his loved one, and the madness with which he pursues her, transmogrifying his attention, blinds him like a victim.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)