Abstract
Besides being a mandatory part of general policies to protect the public and the environment, nuclear safety and security are also critical for the public acceptance of nuclear power plants. This chapter reviews the safety and security aspects involved in the use of energy from nuclear fission, as well as the regulatory system and the international bodies that have been established to address them.
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Notes
- 1.
Backfilling measures are modifications of an existing plant, implemented to take into account the feedback from the operating experience and to correct weaknesses pointed out in the corresponding evaluation process.
- 2.
The World Association of Nuclear Operators (http://www.wano.info/en-gb) is a non-profit organization that gathers every company and country in the world hosting operating commercial nuclear power plants, with the mission to achieve the highest possible standards of nuclear safety.
- 3.
A reactor-year is one year of operation of a single reactor. The number of reactor-years is obtained by summing the number of operating reactors all over the world year by year. For instance, if 10 reactors have each run for one year, the accumulated experience will be 10 reactor-years. If 100 reactors have each run for 10 years, the accumulated experience will be 1000 reactor-years. If the fact that the reactors are not all equal is neglected, it can be considered equivalent to a single reactor operating for 1000 years. To be more accurate, one should calculate the number of reactor-years for each single reactor class to obtain information on the performance of each individual class.
- 4.
Hydrogen is generated when water steam reaches such a high temperature that it can chemically react with the zirconium contained in the fuel cladding according to the following chemical reaction:
\(\text{Zr + 2H}_{\text{2}} \text{O} \to \text{ZrO}_{\text{2}} \text{ + 2H}_{\text{2}} .\)
- 5.
The earthquake was a rare and complex double quake that lasted about 3 min. An area of the seafloor extending 650 km north-south moved typically 10–20 m horizontally. Japan moved a few metres east and the local coastline subsided half a metre. The tsunami inundated an area of about 560 km2 and resulted in a human death toll of over 15,892, while 2573 persons were missing and 6135 were injured as of August 10, 2015, according to Japan's Reconstruction Agency [18]. Much damage was done to coastal ports and towns with over a million buildings destroyed or partly collapsed. Most people died by drowning. In total, over 470,000 people were evacuated from their homes because of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident (about one third of the evacuations were related to the latter). As of August 2015, the number of evacuees had decreased to less than 200,000 people, among which 70,000 are still in temporary housings.
The earthquake shifted the Earth on its axis of rotation by redistributing mass, like putting a dent in a spinning top. It also shortened the length of a day by about a microsecond. The effects of the earthquake were felt around the world, from Norway’s fjords to Antarctica’s ice sheet. Tsunami debris continued to wash up on North American beaches two years later [19].
- 6.
The 2013 report [19] from the World Health Organization states that “The results show the largest additional cancer risks among those exposed in infancy (leukaemia in males and solid cancers in females). Given the exposure to radioactive iodine, during the early phase of the emergency, the lifetime attributable risk of thyroid cancer was specifically assessed. The results show the greatest risk among girls exposed as infants in the most affected area in Fukushima prefecture, although the excess absolute risk is small, because of the low baseline risk of thyroid cancer, it represents a comparatively high relative increase in the lifetime risk of up to around 70 % (as an upper bound). The high relative risk of childhood thyroid cancer becomes more evident when risks are calculated over the first 15 years after the accident for those exposed as infants, because the baseline thyroid cancer risk in early life is very low. Monitoring children’s health is therefore warranted. The risk of leukaemia as a result of radiation exposure from the accident was assessed to be greatest in males exposed as infants in geographical locations with the highest exposure, slightly above 5 % over baseline risk as an upper bound. A similar result is found for breast cancer in girls exposed as infants. For all solid cancers, a maximum relative increase of about 4 % was estimated.” About workers at the plant, the report states that “To date, the Fukushima Daiichi NPP accident has not resulted in acute radiation effects among workers. None of the seven reported deaths among workers is attributable to radiation exposure. For about one third of the workers, the relative increase over background for thyroid cancer is estimated to be up to 20 % for the youngest workers. For less than 1 % of workers, the relative increase over background for leukaemia and thyroid cancer is as high as 28 % in the youngest workers. For those few emergency workers who received very high doses to the thyroid, a notable risk of thyroid cancer is estimated, especially for young workers.”.
- 7.
The tsunami heights coming ashore were about 14 m high, with respect to the design basis value of 5.7 m.
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De Sanctis, E., Monti, S., Ripani, M. (2016). Nuclear Safety and Security. In: Energy from Nuclear Fission. Undergraduate Lecture Notes in Physics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30651-3_5
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