Nuclear Impact

Diagram showing how a nuclear power plant works

Although many people assert that nuclear power is an environmentally conscious energy source
because no greenhouse gases are emitted, it is in no way shape or form a sustainable or
renewable energy source. Mining uranium can have similar problems that arise with coal mining
with the added problem that uranium mill tailings, waste formed by extracting the uranium, are
radioactive. Only 0.1% to 0.2% of uranium ore is made up of uranium, and of that only 0.7% of
this uranium is in the correct form to be used in the reactor. Uranium mining because sulfuric is
used to extract the uranium causes contamination to ground water from radioactive metals and
other metals. In situ leaching is particularly harmful as diagrammed, because the rock is not
removed from the ground instead sulfuric is merely pushed into a deep aquifer.

A diagram of how in situ leaching mining works.

A nuclear power plant meltdown such as the one that occurred in Chernobyl caused a significant
amount of radioactive material to journey through Ukraine and all of Europe. This huge radiation
exposure largely occurred because there was no containment building. In Three Mile Island a
meltdown also occurred, but most of the radiation was secured inside the containment building.
Very strict restrictions have made nuclear power plants safer. Nuclear power plants only emit
0.009 millirems/year, which is a negligible amount compared to natural background radiation.
Therefore, nuclear power plants themselves are fairly safe.
The radioactivity of various different radioactive metals in HLW over time

However, the waste produced at the end of the process has a huge potential to cause public health
problems. Two levels of waste are created at nuclear power plants: low-level waste (LLW) and
high-level waste (HLW). LLW consists of cleaning items and other materials that are exposed to
radiation. Typically, LLW is compacted and burned in special facilities and buried in the ground.
HLW is defined as used nuclear reactor fuel. The waste takes 10,000 years before the activity
begins to level off. Developing strategies to keep this waste carefully contained for 10,000 years
has been difficult, and debates over a national repository have been occurring for quite some
time.

The only possible in public health from Nuclear energy is making us all sick:
Radiation is the energy emitted by the unstable (radio-active) elements .When any atom possess
high energy, it releases the extra energy in the form of radiations to become stable and this
emission is called radio activity. All over the world including in all modern plants the level of
radio activity is higher than acceptable levels and nuclear waste management is making the
surrounding environment dangerous to human settlements. This is true from USA, Europe, and
United Kingdom and even to Japan. When the radiation dose of certain element rises in the
human body, it gives rise to health abnormalities and severe diseases.

Radiations containing energy damage cells in the human tissues. Even these tiny levels of
radiation are more harmful than sunlight Also inhalation of radioactive elements like Radon
enhances the risk of lung cancer. Another radioactive element, Iodine, concentrates in leafy
vegetables and milk being absorbed from soil .When it enters the human body; it migrates to the
thyroid gland in the neck and become malignant, inducing thyroid cancer. People can’t live
without their thyroid glands and thyroid replacement hormones are required daily. Similarly,
Strontium (90) gets absorbed in the cow and goat milk and get accumulated in the human breast
during lactation. Later, it can induce breast cancer, bone cancer and leukaemia.

The primary element in the nuclear elements used earlier was Plutonium. It is the most
dangerous element known to humans. Even its one-millionth gram can cause cancer. It is stored
in the liver and cause liver cancer. If it gets absorbed in the bones, it can induce bone cancer and
blood malignancies. Presently it is used as nuclear fuel and around 200 Kg is produced per year
in the nuclear reactor. So this clearly indicates that if this much amount is used in any future war,
it can destroy almost complete world in one go.

So considering all the facts and statistics available, it can be concluded that the nuclear weapons
containing radioactive elements and nuclear fuels used in the power plants cause severe health
hazards and does not improve public health in any way.

Thyroid Cancer
One of the first major health consequences of the Chernobyl accident was the appearance of
“aggressive thyroid carcinomas” in children. Radiation in the environment due to any
contamination was taken up by grazing cows and heavily concentrated in their mammary
epithelium. Many people in the contaminated region owned their own cows and thus drank large
amounts of contaminated milk. This was especially true for children, for whom milk was a major
part of the diet. The IAEA has also theorized that children’s thyroid glands were more affected
by radiation than adults even though they drank similar quantities of milk because their glands
are much smaller,
Greenpeace’s report, like those presented by the WHO and IAEA, spent a considerable portion
of text analyzing the presence of thyroid cancers in Chernobyl effected children. It came to the
conclusion that “in reality, the number of childhood cancers caused by Chernobyl in Belarus,
Russia, and Ukraine is much greater that indicated by the IAEA and/or the WHO.” They
attribute their higher numbers in part to the fact that radiation doses exceeded permissible dosage
amounts for thyroids in “clean” regions of Ukraine. Thus, they counted cases in areas that were
not considered by the IAEA and the WHO. (1) Greenpeace projects that there could be an
additional 60,000 thyroid cancers diagnosed in the future, a much higher estimate than is
suggested by any information found in the extensive WHO report.
Leukemia and other Solid Cancers
After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, elevated risk of leukemia for
exposed populations was demonstrated 2-5 years later. According to the WHO populations living
in contaminated areas after Chernobyl have demonstrated no such elevated risk of leukemia.
Although some studies have shown an increased incidence of leukemia, the WHO claims “most
[of these] studies had methodological limitations and lacked statistical power.” In support of its
stance, the WHO cites a 1995 study which found higher rates of leukemia in less contaminated
areas. According to the WHO, Japanese survivors of the atomic bombs were on average exposed
to doses of radiation that were much higher in a shorter of period of time, thus causing the
dramatically increased rates of leukemia.

Reproductive and Hereditary Effects

They also cite increased numbers of genital and sexual development abnormalities in the effected
Belarusian population. Claims are also made that exposed children in Belarus have been shown
to demonstrate lower IQ levels and display a “tendency towards development of mild mental
retardation.” Children of liquidators were shown in one study to have an increased number of
genetic mutations compared with siblings conceived before the accident. With regards to
information from the Ukraine, one study is cited which claimed that 54.1% of women effected
by Chernobyl experienced complications in their pregnancies compared with 10.3% of women in
the control group. Another study claims that between 1986 and 1990, there were three times the
normal rate of deformities and developmental abnormalities in Ukrainian newborns, however it
is not made clear in the report how many of these can be attributed to offspring of Chernobyl
affected populations. Strontium presence from Chernobyl has also been indicated for causing a
rise in infant mortality in Ukraine and Belarus after 1989.

Mental Health
The WHO cites mental health concerns, especially issues that appear at the sub-clinical level, as
one of the major health consequences of Chernobyl. The exposed population demonstrated
anxiety levels twice as high as the control population in one study and were three to four times
more likely to report multiple unexplained physical symptoms and subjective poor health than
controls in another study. The common usage of terminology such as “victims” and sufferers” to
denote populations affected by Chernobyl rather than “survivors” is cited as a major cause of
some of these sub-clinical problems. Other confounding factors, such as the break up of the
Soviet Union and resulting political turmoil and social unrest, are also cited. These issues, when
taking into account the upheaval and distress that Chernobyl caused, can be linked not only to
anxiety and depression, but also to extreme behaviors such as excessive health concerns and
reckless behavior. The subclinical mental health consequnce of Chernobyl is one area in which
the WHO and Greenpeace reports have a high degree of correlation.
For the full read please visit http://faculty.virginia.edu/metals/cases/kleinfeld3.html

Environmental Effects of Nuclear Power

In considering environmental effects, let’s look at the effects on air, water, ground, and the
biosphere (people, plants, and animals) – and let’s also look at what can and is being done to
minimize those effects. In the United States, it is important to realize that the law – Title 10 Code
of Federal Regulations (CFR), Part 20 – governs any radioactive releases from nuclear power
plants. If you want to find any federal regulation by title and part, use the Title 10 CFR Index or
National Archives & Records Administration (for all sections of the Code of Federal
Regulations). This section addresses commercial nuclear reactors regulated by the NRC (or
similar agencies in other countries) and does not address the myriad of effects due to government
activities, e.g. at Hanford, where the Hanford Tanks Initiative is correcting problems stemming
from activities in the 1940’s to 1970’s timeframe.

Air- Gaseous Releases

Nuclear plant gaseous releases fall into the following categories:

 Water vapor from cooling towers

 Ventilation exhaust from those buildings that do not have any processes with
radioactivity
 Diesel generator exhaust
 Gases and steam from the air ejectors, that are in the main steam system
 Ventilation exhaust from those buildings that do have processes with radioactivity
 Gases removed from systems having radioactive fluids and gases.

The first two release paths are non-radioactive. Often, news photos of nuclear plants tend to
focus on the tall (400 foot high) dry cooling towers (e.g. Three Mile Island, Perry). The major
effect of these cooling towers is heating of the air around the plant. Warm water vapor is all that
is released (unless chemicals are injected for biological treatment). The cooling towers are often
required by state and/or federal regulatory agencies to reduce the thermal impact if a river of a
lake is the primary cooling source. The second source – ventilation exhaust from those buildings
that do not have any processes with radioactivity – are just like releases from ventilation systems
from any office building.

The air ejector exhaust at PWRs is usually non-radioactive. Only in those cases where there may
be leakage through a steam generator tube could that exhaust have any radioactivity. At BWRs,
the air ejector exhaust is radioactive.

Water-Liquid Releases

Nuclear plant liquid releases fall into the following categories:

 Non-radioactive
 Slightly radioactive

Water that has been used to cool the condenser, various heat exchangers (e.g. to cool oil, steam,
water) used in the turbine-generator support processes, or that has passed through the cooling
towers is non-radioactive. Some or all of this water may be discharged to a river, sea, lake. The
thermal discharge of any type of power plant, nuclear or fossil fuel,   using a steam cycle
operating under the same conditions (e.g. steam pressure, inlet condenser water temperature)
should be the same. In some cases, a coal plant may operate at higher temperatures and steam
pressures than a nuclear plant, thus it  may have a slightly higher efficiency, with slightly lower
release of thermal discharge to the environment..

Usually water released from the steam generators (called blowdown) is also non-radioactive.
Very low levels of leakage (e.g. less than 400 gallons per day) may be allowed from the reactor
cooling system to the secondary cooling system of the steam generator. However, in any case
where radioactive water may be released to the environment, it must be stored and radioactivity
levels reduced through ion exchange processes below levels allowed by the 10CFR20 regulation.

Within the nuclear plant, there are a number of systems that may contain radioactive fluids. As
noted above, those liquids must be stored, cleaned, sampled, and verified to be below acceptable
levels before release may be done – AND – mistakes are not tolerated by the NRC. Effluent
requirements are specified in Appendix B Table 2 of 10CFR20. As in the gaseous release case,
radiation detectors monitor release paths and isolate (close valves) if radiation levels exceed a
preset setpoint.

Solid Releases-Ground Effects

Solid radioactive materials only leave the plant by three paths:

 Routine non radioactive office, process, and building material waste via traditional means
 Radioactive waste (e.g. clothes, rags, wood) is compacted and placed in drums. These
drums must be thoroughly de-watered. The drums are often checked at the receiving
location by regulatory agencies. Special landfills must be used.
 Spent resin may be very radioactive and is shipped in specially designed containers, In
case of Sri Lanka, where are we going to put these and ship them to,.

For introductory information on low level waste, see Low Level Waste and More on Low Level
Waste.
Currently, the used fuel assemblies are stored underwater in large cooling pools at the plant. In
some cases, where storage has become limited, dry cask storage on-site may be used. This
storage is covered by the regulation 10CFR72 for Independent Spent Fuel Storage Facilities. For
introductory information on high level waste, see High Level Waste and More on High Level
Waste.

Ultimate Disposal of Spent Fuel

Originally, the intent had been that the spent fuel would be reprocessed. The limited amount of
highly radioactive waste (also called high level waste) was to be placed in glass rods surrounded
by metal with low long term corrosion or degradation properties. The intent was to store those
rods in specially designed vaults where the rods could be recovered for the first 50-100 years and
then made unretrievable for up to 10000 years. Various underground locations had been
considered – salt domes, granite formations, basalt formations – and finally – Congress
designated Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The desire was for a geologically stable location with
minimal chance for groundwater intrusion. There is currently some controversy regarding the
suitability of Yucca Mountain as a final repository.

The intent had been to recover the plutonium and unused uranium fuel, then reuse it in either
breeder or thermal reactors as mixed oxide fuel (also called MOX). Currently, France, Great
Britain, and Japan are using this process and well known for their radioactive leakages  to the
surroundings. In Japan the sea boarding the plant is untouchable..

Impact on the Biosphere

In the 1960’s, the Atomic Energy Commission funded research to investigate effects of radiation
on people, plants, and animals. Some of the studies were conducted at the Lawrence Radiation
Laboratory in Livermore, California and at various government and university laboratories. A
number of studies entitled the BEAR (Biological Effects of Atomic Radiation) and BEIR
(Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation) studies reported on these effects. The most recent,
BEIR VII Phase 2, “Health Effects of Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation”, (see
summary) was published by the National Academy Press in 2005. A down to earth discussion of
radiation is presented in the University of Wisconsin Graduate School’s Whyfiles – Radiation
Reassessed.

Mining, Milling and Enrichment Issues

Are we planning to do a open mines to keep the supply. Then God Bless Sri Lanka.

Nuclear-related mining effects are similar to those of other industries – generation of tailings and
water pollution. In Grand Junction, Colorado. In the 1970’s, this fill was removed when it was
recognized that this mined material produced general background radiation levels higher than
maximum acceptable levels. The fill had to be placed under cover.

Uranium milling plants process naturally radioactive materials. Radioactive airborne emissions
and local land contamination is resulted.
The US has older enrichment plants. These were originally designed to enrich U-235 for bombs,
but subsequently were diverted to enrich uranium for NPP fuel. Because they were built in the
1940’s and in rural areas, they happen to use coal and oil. Also, the enrichment process requires
large amounts of electrical energy to produce enriched material.   That energy, while currently
produced by coal and oil, could be produced by nuclear plants.  Newer enriching technologies,
e.g. gas centrifuges, are used in Europe.