Galvanized by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disasters, PhD student Xingang Zhao envisions a future with safe, efficient nuclear power. Publication Date :. Press Inquiries. Press Contact : Abby Abazorius. Email: abbya mit. Phone: Caption : Xingang Zhao standing next to a mockup of a fuel assembly in a pressurized water reactor. Credits : Image: Jared Charney. Caption :. Credits :. To find out just how low, Zhao refers to the principles of physics. Related Articles. Turning up the heat. Keeping the balance: How flexible nuclear operation can help add more wind and solar to the grid.
From coolants to a carbon-constrained world. Monica Pham: Advancing nuclear power and empowering girls. But nuclear is a strong contender because it is the only technology that actually exists. The Watts Bar reactors will provide power to 1. That's a good deal, but still. Show a crowd a pair of cooling towers, and at least some of them will see an atomic apocalypse featuring three-eyed fish, leafless forests, and hospital-gowned Soviet defectors with skin like glistening mayonnaise.
Nuclear power may be clean, but people still question whether it is, or ever will be, safe enough. Those fears may be moot. Safety concerns didn't delay construction on Watts Bar Unit 2 for so many years. Economics did. For all that fear, nuclear power still has the safest track record of any power source.
Nuclear energy sources are dangerous because they emit radiation—particles and energy shed from unstable molecules trying to calm down. Enough radiation will give you cancer, or possibly even pass genetic mutations on to your kids. Too much can kill you outright. But plants like Watts Bar don't release much radiation into the environment. Inside, radioactive material heats water, which turns into steam, which spins the enormous turbines that generate electricity.
Plants regularly release some of that water and steam at rates prescribed by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and if you live downriver or downwind of one, the radiation within will raise your chances of developing a tumor by just one tenth of one percent. You're far more likely to grow a tumor because you sneak a cigarette now and again. But you aren't afraid of routine releases. These disasters were the result of a meltdown, which occurs when something impedes a reactor's ability to cool the fuel.
The US, where nearly 20 percent of electricity comes from 99 nuclear plants, uses uranium. Older reactorswhich is every reactor in the US, including Watts Bar Unit use electric pumps to move water through the system. The Fukushima disaster showed what happens it you have pumps but no power to use them.
Newer generations rely on gravity instead, draining cooling water from elevated storage tanks to send it through the reactor core. With nuclear energy, Oak Ridge Laboratory Director, Alvin Weinberg, argued, humans could create fertilizer, fresh water, and thus abundant food — forever. But literal-minded nuclear advocates like Weinberg missed the point. Cheap and abundant energy was — for Malthusians — not a feature but rather a bug. The Sierra Club and other environmentalists hated nuclear because it held out the promise of universal prosperity.
It was at that moment that environmental groups and their philanthropic supporters began a half-century long campaign to frighten the public. Drawing on archival research by Edward Calabrese, a University of Massachusetts, Amherst professor of toxicology, Rhodes describes the work of Hermann Muller, a University of Texas geneticist who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in But just before Muller flew to Stockholm to accept his Nobel Prize, he was sent new research that contradicted his conclusions.
Muller faced a dilemma. What he should have done was qualify his Nobel lecture. On his return to the U. However, as the main reviewer of the paper, Muller proceeded to oversee its publication — with two changes. The good news is that a growing number of scientists who specialize in radiation, climate, and public health are speaking out for nuclear power plants as critical to saving lives. Over the last two and half years, climate scientists like Hansen and scholars like Rhodes have joined forces to protect and expand nuclear power plants, from Illinois and New York to South Korea and France.
Now, radiation scientists with the backing of the British and Indian governments are urging governments to stay calm and carry on during nuclear accidents. Their efforts hold out the hope that, whether or not fears of air pollution and global warming can ever trump fears of nuclear accidents, we might at least stop ourselves from grossly over-reacting to them. This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here.
More From Forbes. Jul 2, , am EDT.
0コメント