Perry Nuclear Power Plant

1. Perry Nuclear Power Plant 5

2. How does the power plant work? Contaminationof our water? Click link: http://www.southerncompany.com/learningpower/howplants.aspx

3. Could radiation leak? • The barriers in a typical plant are: the fuel is in the form of solid ceramic (UO2) pellets, and radioactive fission products remain largely bound inside these pellets as the fuel is burned. The pellets are packed inside sealed zirconium alloy tubes to form fuel rods. These are confined inside a large steel pressure vessel with walls up to 30 cm thick - the associated primary water cooling pipework is also substantial. All this, in turn, is enclosed inside a robust reinforced concrete containment structure with walls at least one metre thick.  This amounts to three significant barriers around the fuel, which itself is stable up to very high temperatures. • http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf06.html

4. Could the power plant explode? • Explosions: there is no possible way that a reactor could ever explode like a nuclearbomb. Reactors and bombs are very different. Reactors andbombs are really not even related to each other. • Bombs require 90% fissionable material. • Power plant fuel is only 4% • http://americasclimatechoices.org/Geoengineering_Input/attachments/Greisch_REACTOR%20NOT%20BOMB.pdf

5. Meltdown? • What causes meltdown? • What can be done to prevent meltdown? • water cooling system – do we have enough water? • control rods http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PWR_control_rod_assemby.jpg

6. Dropping the control rods can shut down a reactor • Quickly shutting down a reactor in this way is called scramming the reactor. Urban legend has it that the control rods hung above the reactor, suspended by a rope. In an emergency a person assigned to the job would take a fire axe and cut the rope, allowing the rods to fall into the reactor and stop the fission. At some point the title of the person assigned this duty was given as SCRAM, or Safety Control Rod Axe Man. This term continues to be in use today for shutting down a reactor by dropping the control rods.

7. How much nuclear power do WE use? • AEP Ohio’s 2007 electricity generation fuel mix was dominated by coal (77%) but also included nuclear power (16%), natural gas (4%), oil (1%), hydro (1%), and other (1%). • http://www.ohio.edu/sustainability/ou-energy-faq.htm

8. Cost effective/profitable? • Currently not quite as profitable as natural gas power plants due to drop in price of gas.

9. How big is the Perry plant? • One of the largest in the country! • how much power does Perry produce • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_boiling_water_reactors • About 700 employees

10. Jobs in Nuclear Power • Lakeland nuclear energy http://www.lakelandcc.edu/academic/engineer/nuclear • Nuclear jobs: http://www.win-global.org/ • Link, slide 11

12. Why doesn’t the NRC regulate the radiation in my microwave oven? • What is an ion? Microwave radiation is non-ionizing radiation. It causes electrons to vibrate, thereby generating heat, but it does not have sufficient energy to cause physical harm by removing electrons from atoms. The NRC regulates ionizing radiation. http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/related-info/faq.html

14. History of Nuclear energy • Radioactive substances initially discovered by Becquerel in 1896. He was more interested in X-rays so he turned it over to his student Marie Curie. • http://www.aip.org/history/mod/fission/fission2/07.html

15. Interesting uses for radioactive substances http://cosmeticsandskin.com/aba/glowing-complexion.php http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/offbeat-news/10-radioactive-products-that-people-actually-used/1388

16. Nuclear bombs • Fission bomb, slide 8 • Fusion bomb, slide 4 Manhattan project http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAmanhattan.htm http://atomicagecinema.com/mediabunker/ae-presents-the-manhattan-project/

17. After the war… • 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower gave his "Atoms for Peace" speech. In which he proposed the establishment of the International Atomic Energy Agency • to devise "methods whereby this fissionable material would be allocated to serve the peaceful pursuits of mankind. • to provide abundant electrical energy in the power-starved areas of the world."Shortly after Eisenhower's speech, the U.S. Congress passed the 1954 Atomic Energy Act. The Act essentially ended the government's monopoly on technical data and began efforts to support the growth of a private commercial nuclear industry. • http://users.owt.com/smsrpm/nksafe/

18. First nuclear power plant! • First electricity from nuclear energy on December 20, 1951. • The first commercial electricity-generating plant powered by nuclear energy was located in Shippingport, Pennsylvania. It reached its full design power in 1957. Obinsk, Russia in 1954. • http://www.ne.doe.gov/pdfFiles/History.pdf

19. Nuclear disasters • The three significant accidents in the 50-year history of civil nuclear power generation are: • Three Mile Island (USA 1979) where the reactor was severely damaged but radiation was contained and there were no adverse health or environmental consequences. • Fukushima (Japan 2011) where three old reactors (together with a fourth) were written off and the effects of loss of cooling due to a huge tsunami were inadequately contained. Link • Chernobyl(Ukraine 1986) where the destruction of the reactor by steam explosion and fire killed 31 people and had significant health and environmental consequences. The death toll has since increased to about 50

20. Incidents • There have been three major reactor accidents in the history of civil nuclear power – • Three Mile Island was contained without harm to anyone • Fukushima severely tested the containment, allowing some release of radiation • Chernobyl involved an intense fire without provision for containment but is of little relevance to reactor design outside the old Soviet bloc • These are the only major accidents to have occurred in over 14,500 cumulative reactor-years of commercial nuclear power operation in 32 countries. • http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf06.html

21. Nuclear disasters • Apart from Chernobyl, no nuclear workers or members of the public have ever died as a result of exposure to radiation due to a commercial nuclear reactor incident. • Most of the serious radiological injuries and deaths that occur each year (2-4 deaths and many more exposures above regulatory limits) are the result of large uncontrolled radiation sources, such as abandoned medical or industrial equipment. • http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf05.html

22. More links! • http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf06app.html • http://vimeo.com/19798732

23. Distance to safety • Emergency Planning Zones • For planning purposes, the NRC defines two emergency planning zones (EPZs) around each nuclear power plant. • The plume exposure pathway EPZ extends about 10 miles in radius around a plant. Its primary concern is the exposure of the public to, and the inhalation of, airborne radioactive contamination. • The ingestion pathway EPZ extends about 50 miles in radius around a plant. Its primary concern is the ingestion of food and liquid that is contaminated by radioactivity. • http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/emerg-plan-prep-nuc-power-bg.html

25. KI • “reviews by the WHO Expert Group revealed no evidence of increased cancer risks, apart from thyroid cancer, that can clearly be attributed to radiation from Chernobyl.” • http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs303/en/index.html

26. Mutations • http://www.dnalc.org/view/15529-Radiation-can-cause-DNA-mutations-3D-animation-with-narration.html • http://web.me.com/stewartbrand/DISCIPLINE_footnotes/Birth_defects.html

27. Deaths per year • article

28. How can exposure to radiation be minimized? • Time, distance, and shielding measures minimize your exposure to radiation in much the same way as they would to protect you against overexposure to the sun.

29. Q. Are we ever likely to have nuclear powered cars? • http://one-car-news.blogspot.com/2011/09/nuclear-powered-car.html • http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13746_7-20100035-48/is-a-nuclear-powered-car-in-our-future/ • http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/smart-takes/nuclear-cars-with-help-from-thorium-lasers/18868 • http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/nuclear-power-fuel-car/story?id=11836118

30. For how long will nuclear power be available? • Present reactors that use only the U-235 in natural uranium are very likely good for some hundreds of years. With breeder reactors, we can have plenty of energy for some billions of year. • http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/nuclear-faq.html

31. Radiation from cell phones • Cell phone radiation is non-ionizing, as opposed to the ionizing radiation given off by, say, x-rays or nuclear waste. That said, it's never a bad idea to be cautious, as the human track record for recognizing the dangers surrounding stuff we use everyday (can anyone say cigarettes?) isn't so hot. • And studies have found that there appears to be a higher risk for cancerous tumors in people who have used cell • phones for >10 years. • http://planetgreen.discovery.com/work-connect/radioactive-cell-phone.html

32. Look up your cell phone • http://www.ewg.org/cellphone-radiation

33. Risk of terrorist attack? • The risks from western nuclear power plants, in terms of the consequences of an accident or terrorist attack, are minimal compared with other commonly accepted risks. Nuclear power plants are very robust. • http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf06.html • http://www.nrc.gov/security/faq-security-assess-nuc-pwr-plants.html#1 • Article about natural reactors